Show Your Teeth

by tobias crabtree

Cannon is 4, he holds up four fingers with the thumb tucked when he says it. His folks let him be in the pool with me whenever they please. Cannon is safe with me. He’s safe with me anywhere.

Tonight I saw a meteor fall in the evening sky over Moreno Valley. It was the biggest light I’ve ever seen from a meteor. Green then white and then the colors of fire in an evening sky with a half moon. With so much light pollution, I just couldn’t believe how much light it created. I half expected to hear the impact and prepare for whatever that means. My lover, 300 miles north, saw the flash from her tent in Death Valley. The world is small in relation to the cosmos; so very, very tiny. I am smaller yet. And little Cannon, he’s smaller even then.

We talked in the pool, Cannon and I. He’s bright and worldly, like an animal. He was naked and full of that otterish disposition that I see in kids that love water. He was on my knees. In the midst of flying arms and flashing butt, he slowed for just a moment and said something I barely heard over his clamor. “All of Life is through my head.” I thought I heard it, but I couldn’t believe it came from his mouth. I slowed his wildness and asked him to say again. “All of Life is through my head.”

Do you hear this? Do you hear what my little love has said?

I asked him what he meant. I feared that too many questions would squelch the loveliness that had just flashed through the sky of the mind of the child. He said more, “All the things and the pictures and the dreams of the world are in my head.” And here I am laid low, a stumbling layman in the presence of God. Then the child’s eyes to the sky, “and that’s beautiful and that’s beautiful and that….” his finger pointing to eucalyptus trees and towhees and blue blue sky.

Are you here? I don’t think I’m the most intuitive of us all. I don’t claim to understand people. I struggle with being too cross with my judgements and too sure of my views. But when the bats fly over the New Mexican canyons I feel my heart become rivers. If the whale plunges from her world beneath and shows her belly to our sun, I will fall on my knees, I will worship. When pieces of the Universe fall and turn to fire over the hills in Southern Cal, I will listen, I mean I will damn listen and say, “I am here.” Then, when this child/god says to me, “All Life is through my head”, I will hear him and love him for his heart. I will follow him through the fire-hate we humans are tending. I will give him audience and room to speak and, in the end, I will trust him to bury me and bury me good and deep.

I asked him then if dreams were real. He told me so very honestly that he did not know. He said that some things were real and some things were made up. I agreed. I felt the time fleeting and I saw him falling away into the world I cannot reach; one where I’m included but not necessary. In these seconds that fall, I can’t help but chase and fail. It’s true, I’m no child. So he flew like the birds that are beautiful and I choked on my adulthood.

But give me words that mean something. Give me hearts that beat with fear of the wild wind. Give me eyes that look into the green and murky water and expect the swimming lions. Please, for the sake of the stars, allow me reverence at the altar of the wilderness. And send the storms. Save room for my knees so that I can worship. Hold me in the rip current and teach me the smallness of me. There are nights to weather and mosquitos to swat and accept, there are distances to cover, bones to break and pretty words to misplace in my buckbrush mind. There are friends to bury and races to lose. I have yet to be tired of a perfect morning, where my coffee is strong, my heart is full and my body finds purchase in the world into which it was born.

There is more to say, but probably less that I can say well. So instead, let me listen. Oh please let me have enough heartbeats to impress the ones that love me. I will fall down and pray to the children and the moon, give me heartbeats to show how much I love this wild, wild Earth. Listen, if to nothing else, that I love the whales and the tiny birds. That I love the little creeks in the aspens and that I’m a product of something good. And by good, I mean small but quite toothy. Also, please, if you don’t mind, call me an animal– nothing grand, perhaps a minnow or a beetle. Just call me something wild.

“All Life is through my head.” Things are beautiful. Follow the children. Show your teeth.