Wizard

…Pahn has left the strip mall

 and gone into the high country

He drives across a sub-alpine basin     of reflective

white      granite

and a stunted        sparse      forest of trees

 that yearn toward

                        a lake         like a mirror in the distance

that sits

in a terminal cirque with glacier polished slopes

His mood rises    as he thinks

of these glaciated mountains          and falls

as he is reminded

                      of their fragility         so close to despoliation

and he drives reluctantly                the gravel road…  

…Pahn has driven

                   past a large lake       in a flat valley        forested

with young and vigorous spruce

                                     fir and

aspen

He stops

and leaves the small car

to speak to friends  

He has a passenger    who comes with him 

At first      Pahn is naked

 but he decides

to go back to the car     to put clothes on 

He comments to his passenger

that if    he were alone in the wilderness

he wouldn’t bother to put on clothes—

that he likes being naked             and feeling

                                                                the wind on his skin

His passenger

(who may be British)

is uncomfortable

and unimpressed by

                Pahn’s feelings of wildness

but Pahn continues to explain              saying

          he thinks people will be embarrassed

by his nudity…returning

to his car

it has become

            a motor-home

 

He isn’t sure     that it wasn’t a motor-home before

but he doesn’t dwell on the confusion

 Although he walks back

to the motor-home

and possibly gets in

he finds himself

                         walking down the road in the late afternoon

and notices

                                      that the mosquitoes are coming out

              buzzing his bare legs 

He remembers the West Nile Virus         and thinks

he should get some repellent

with DEET

 

He has a long-sleeved shirt and

puts it on          but

his legs are still exposed          Momentarily

he finds himself

               on a ridge of crags

in the body of a heavy man

                                                  who is wearing a white robe

          which turns

                                                             midnight and starry

Pahn in the body of the heavy man

is sitting on a crag

at the edge of the range

looking down over a wet valley forest

                of broadleaved trees with

their new spring growth and

he can see the town in the distance

thousands of feet below

He is balancing now

in a crook between

                              two points on this crag and

       is experiencing vertigo

His dizziness comes

                                             and goes

                            while he wonders

                    where his strength is and

                                                            if he has enough  

He considers

                                weather it would matter

                                              to him if he let go

             but the sensation of falling is too frightening  

He runs his hand

over the rock and finds

a good ledge

  to grip onto

 his heart falling       for a moment

as he doubts his ability

     to make it down

    from the crag…

…Pahn is walking

through the older part of town looking

           for repellent 

He enters a building 

There is a wide hall

                                      leading toward the back with doors

on either side                                   He opens

             the first door on his right and

        walks in seeing people

sitting at tables and at a bar

in a slightly sepia room 

There are neatly stacked items

         in small boxes

and jars that might

         be things like

tea

         and jam 

   He surveys them quickly seeing

that there is no repellent 

        The people in the room stare at him

   as if he were in the wrong place

                                                and he concludes that despite

the modest décor

dingy feel

                 it is a private club 

He feels stupid

for a moment

and then leaves the room        to continue up the hall 

Near the end        he becomes aware

of the art deco moldings

He stops to look at a more ornamented door

                      that has a rounded lintel

                            and a word above it that was clearly

once prominent

but has been painted over

so that it is barely

 noticeable       He distinctly makes out the letters

o—c—c—u—p—i—e—d

   

He thinks of turning

back to the front of the building where

 there is natural light coming

from the windows

when a plump man

dressed as a woman

walks by and leads him

into a back room 

There in a nook       the plump man

 lays down       saying something to indicate

that he wants to make love 

The walls of this room are a pale old-fashioned

green and there are no windows

or curtains

                                    or furniture

and the man lifts    coyly

his dress to reveal

 his plump womanly body  

Pahn steps

over the mans knees

and the man says

      “be gentle” 

Pahn says

almost under his breath

“I am not going to be gentle”  with conviction

Now Pahn is kneeling beside

the plump man and looks

over to find another man’s knee ineffectually

trying to force apart the legs

of the plump man

and Pahn

thinks to himself

“The plump man is resisting

                      and the other man is truly trying to force him”

Pahn in a breath inhabits

the mind and body of the man with the knee

pulling apart         the plump man’s thighs      with his hands 

The plump man’s body

 is like a woman’s

and she has no penis

Pahn puts his own penis

             almost on the floor evenly

     in between her buttocks

                                            

though he is not sure

 if he is hard or

if there is a vagina there      and pushes   His mind

                                                            wanders for a moment

but then he finds      she is tightly around him

   and he slides back       and forth in her purse

      thickly warming         and coming…

…Pahn walks

                                          out of the back of the building

into the watery California spring 

Almost immediately he arrives at

a small alluvial precipice

the kind of gravelly drop that used to be common

 in the waste areas surrounding

California towns

He bypasses the scarp crossing

a shallow seasonal stream

                                                   and walks into the woods…