Two Fables by Edie Meidav

Crawling

What does it mean to crawl sideways in a continuum? Here might you please find the wisdom of experts who gather around the baby, this child who looks at a destination but then scoots backward, face beaming puzzled and interested in the phenomenon. How did you manage your own original boldness? We may be out of the cradle endlessly rocking and all, but what a feat. You found your first rhythm of the pacifist, crawl and look around, pausing, even as branches get so laden they forgot sun. First premise: you grew up in a world in which the literalism of direction ruled. Through your crib’s rungs, you searched for trees and continue these habits, squinting at light through perforated veils of worry through which you dimly understand sky. How strangely we skid into adulthood, facing beauty and believing we understand, as if these twiglets forming words could lead us to any target.

Running

Yesterday, everywhere you went people were afraid. In one group, they talked of how another group is coming after them. In another group, one person silenced another because she was afraid of any deviation from the rules. Meanwhile, the squirrels held their convocation about bare trees and the unseasonable sun. You may have wished to run but inside you were left with nothing pulsing and no one thanked anyone. To run in California hills once meant to dream toward the sun-singed top of forever. Now what does not seem a finite loop? And will they ever come back, those supple golden hopes?

Edie Meidav is the author of Another Love Discourse (Terra Nova/MIT), Lola, California (FSG), and other books. She teaches in the UMass Amherst MFA program.

9 May 2025