so. so rare. such as you who seek some thing everyone knows
so you may share it with those infected with denial.

---

I'll be the fool who risks belief and go on with the story flowing from my belly
before
my very augmented eyes

Wisdom is justified of her children,
said a nubian wizard
named John Joyce.
No relation to James.

Same general era, I met Adam Funmaker. He showed me
an article in Rolling Stone that mentioned me
June 7, 1973, idea of me, not me,
actually,

that was me. the guy with ears that weren't garbage cans,
which had been the liturgical reply to
words deemed too filthy to say or hear,

To this day I don't care for the taste.

This story fiber began with Adam Funmaker being real, and my feeling many folk would never allow a man with such a name to have been,

much less to have been, my friend. who made my silver wedding ring.

A real man, father of many sons and daughters, still
with us
to this day,
This telling
dedicated in my lodge, my strong tower, my kiva,

To Adam Funmaker, I fan this cloud, be magnified magi.
From my desert you blessed with more than water.

A humbler man I've never met. A scrimshaw artist of great renown among collectors of such, for his technique.
It seemed magic, the photo-realism
he could attain to,
pins and hand and ink and string and light, his only tools,

the light was modified to meet the needs of Adam's ageing eyes
He was sixty-two when I thought with him last,

and sixty-two was older then than now,
he used to ask me questions I had not asked myself.

I only knew him for the space
of a tick
with point of pin pricking
ivory,  ttttttttttttt ttttt ttt ttttttt tttt far more
than 300 dpi,
But magic was not allowed to be the reason for
the power of reality in his work.

How do you do this? I asked, from a state of ad-mire

Opaque projector.

Ah, secret, he coulda kept it and been thought
amazing, sender of men in search of hows
denied whys, but he didn't

he told me the trick, as if his hand and eye and mind
were taken for granted, acknowledged by being

right used before my unaugmented eyes.

His gift he had received and owned,
not a thing to boast about, like a boy.

He was looking at me, something I remember
this way, a point, a reflection in the eye
that made images of the ideas of men
past
seem in the wind I go on to claim as my inheritance.
That's the scene from here, much was different,
most likely.

Adam Funmaker's clansmen from the past
breathed, nearly, their blessing, the hope

on ivory etched so nearly fractally real you can see
a reflection in Sitting Bull's eye staring

at a 440 stainless steel, razor-edged blade, never used.

A knife made for the image on the handle,
A magic Adam Funmaker portrait of a noble illiterate
chief among noble illiterates whose stories
have been told ten thousand years.

The Greeks fears were warranted.
Writing did shorten memories.
But it gave stories freedom to wend and find points

upon which they be told, to this day,
for no real reason, same as sunsets and beauty in general.

the knife I was looking at is depicted on the web
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/adam-funmaker-scrimshaw-native-1835351935
My wife still has her wedding ring, I lost mine,
in the desert or the storm or the fire, I can't remember losing it.