We were leaving the house for the bookstore, then lunch. Tizi asked, “Do you have a copy of Marcus Aurelius?”
“No, why?”
“I thought it might be a good gift for the boys.”
Safe, for sure. These are high school boys, nephews. They’ll have birthdays. She’ll be ready. A few years ago I bought a book of poetry for their sister who was graduating from high school. Fortunately I read it before I wrapped it. That might be a motto. Read before wrapping. It had some vivid sex in it. I’d heard this poet read at an English teacher conference one year. I saw her in a new light now. We kept her book. It’s somewhere in our library.
“Shouldn’t we?”
“What?”
“Shouldn’t we have a copy of Marcus Aurelius?”
We picked up our friend Sherrie and drove to the bookstore, where we found a new copy of his Meditations. For us, Tizi said.
Lunch was across the parking lot. We might have driven. The sun was out. It was almost warm. When we walked up, outside the restaurant, to the right side of the entrance, three Canada geese were honking on the wet patio. One goose, I saw, was missing a foot.
“It’s just holding it funny,” Tizi said.
“I don’t know. Standing on one foot like that. Goose yoga?”
Sherrie pushed Tizi toward the door, said come on, let’s eat.
“Why would it be missing a foot?”
“Geese fight,” I said. “They’re not nice animals.”
The hostess was about to seat us when Tizi pointed to the front of the restaurant, facing the road, facing the little swamp just outside the large picture windows. So we moved up front. We ordered and ate.
Just as the food arrived, two of the geese crossed in front the restaurant and approached the edge of the swamp. Down next to the water were 6-7 little balls of yellow feathers, on little webbed feet. The two geese herded them into the water.
“Swimming lessons,” I said. “The one with the missing leg will have to hop over here. Or fly.”
Sherrie moved her salad around with her fork. “You’re terrible,”
“I think its leg is just fine,” Tizi said.
“One leg,” I said, “it must swim around in circles.”
“You’re SO terrible.”
“That might confuse the babies,” I said.
Back home I snooped around in the Meditations and landed on this, from Book 4, 13. ““Before ten days are over, you will seem a god to those who presently view you as a wild beast or an ape, if only you return to your principles and your reverence for reason.”
It seemed reasonable that the goose missing a leg would fly from the restaurant entrance to the swamp, a distance of 40 feet. That’s what I would do if I were a goose. Having walked, I would hate hopping. I might also think being a one-legged goose is easier than being a human, who has to reckon with his dual nature, god and beast.
