Jeff Hoffman
Professor Plum Struggles to Find
the names for things. This morning, drowsy before noon, another flock of
neurons crack loose from their branches, fly off to burn in the sun. Plum fights on nonetheless—flashlight reassembled from bits and bobs more readily available: I remember the night my mother walked me down to the beach, and with pipe-lamps we chased the skittering . . .
Plum pauses, glowers, can’t remember the name for the claw-sprouted shells that dug themselves holes, disappeared beneath the surf. Plum closes his eyes, begins to build again his salt-air shelter. Doubt
walks in and swallows him—the beach erased, the wand of light no longer in his hand. To watch the waves, did we climb instead some type of tower? Was
the tower a dune? Did a clump of beach grass save me from falling? Or were
the waves and the grass and the dune and the falling only drawings in a book
my mother read to me? “Ocean,” she said, and together we traced the letters,
my finger hypnotized by the gently stubbled fabric of the page. Stretchy-tall
circle to start. At the end, stick legs about to run: O – c – e – a –
n
Other work by Jeff Hoffman