Spinning Pins

The painter and the weaver have their antecedents.

The weaver tells the painter about broadcast landmarks: the neon letters affixed to the bluff, lighting C-L-A-R-K one at a time and then CLARK-CLARK-CLARK repeatedly, and also a ketchup bottle that empties, empties, then suddenly fills, also in neon. This is a weirdly old-fashioned dream of the future. Electricity paints a city in her imagining.

The painter tells the weaver about the sentence bird. This is a songster, possibly blue, that delivers its call with such regularity--like neon blinking on and off--that the clanging phrase seems to exist inside his ears rather than in trees--smaller caves, not bigger ones--and he hears it even at night when the bird is surely quiet. The call, unlike the casual inquiry of the red-eyed vireo or the magnificent fanfare of the cardinal, is an actual sentence: a complete, descending thought with a touch of offhand arrogance about it. The bird utters it all day long every 10 to 15 seconds.

These antecedents--one tall and red, one an echo chamber of whistled sound--help the painter and the weaver understand each other sometimes.