Tug

By Ford, Frank Bernard

Sees her in a construction
bucket being hoisted up against the
sun to a traffic light outside the
dental school. Her darkly yellow
helmet. Flees to Houston Hall where
friends discover him shrunk into a
triangularity of Expresso Cart,
Arby's Roast Beef, and Philly
Cheesesteak.

``She's here! My mother! Red
light!'' They convince him it's
impossible, to lighten up.

Back to his room to fetch books
for Political Science, he departs
the dorm through a crew raking
leaves. Checked flannel shirts,
shafts of dusty sunlight. Her.
Quite round and singularly benign,
looking a bit like the pope about
to bless with a glowing rake.
Jettisons books and papers, all,
into the crunching leaves. Past his
friends who try to intersect Hey!
catapults he.

Runs to exhaustion, then
staggers onto the Philadelphia Art
Museum's steps, collapses - at the
top of which she's into the Rocky
imitation in capacious bra above
boxing trunks of snaking
iridescence.

His second wind cuts in and he
bolts to the campus. That evening
the university opens a new folk
center, and he, chosen by a student
committee to give the address of
welcome, introduces afterwards a
troupe of mummers, designated a
“Cowboy Comic Brigade.” A
sequined twenty surround him,
twirling ropes while performing the
famous mummer's strut, a kind of
zig-zagging stompabout as if
wearing snowshoes. Lasso slaps his
shoulder, flops over his head. Down
to his waist. He doesn't look
up.