portents, omens, and the like

when roving about the land,
the sexy young man had found
he most liked to stay hidden:
behind shubbery, cuddled up to walls,
in ditches, beneath willow trees.
he was rarely seen. by anyone.
once, when he was leaning naked
against the smooth gray-green
trunk of an especially large willow tree (his
all-time favorite species of tree),
and contemplating the world, life,
his own enigmatic essence,
a sudden wind came up
and parted the low-hanging
limbs of the willow tree, and
revealed him standing there,
naked, intent on his contemplations,
to a group of teenage-boy thugs.
they pointed at him and laughed
at him, and said things like,
"hey dude what's a matter you
ferget to put on yer clothes this
morning?" and "what kind of
nudist nutcake pervert are you?"
and things of that nature.
very quickly, they surrounded
the sexy young man and
began to push and shove
him in a very threatening
manner. one of the thugs
mentioned "ass-rape,"
and, at that moment,
a bolt of lightning
struck the tree
and fried to cinders everybody
except for the
sexy young man who had
been the object of everyone's
attention.  he stood there
naked, dusty, all the hair on his
body sticking out
in unusual ways,
and, then he sighed, as if
the weight of the world
had just been lifted
from his shoulders. then,
under the cover of
storm and wind and rain,
he slipped off to a
deserted and secluded cabin
in a distant meadow
where he slept naked,
chilled by the breeze, and
exhausted by his recent adventure.

--Carl Miller Daniels