Allusion (ə-ˈlü-zhən):[1] A reference/representation of/to a well-known person, place, event, literary work, or work of art . . . “a brief reference, explicit or indirect, to a person, place or event, or to another literary work or passage”. It is left to the reader or hearer to make the connection . . . ; an overt allusion is a misnomer for what is simply a reference.[2]
The answer was blowin’ the wind. My cat boat was out front. I was going to win my 5th race since I started doing this two years ago. This was the big one! If I won, I’d get the job driving the tourist tram around the harbor loaded with summer pukes “oohing and aahing” at the beauty of it all. My favorite stop was going to be the “Help the Animals Thrift Shop.” They took all kinds of donations to help animals stuck in shelters—mainly dogs and cats, but there was a turtle and a rabbit too.
I loved to look at their inventory. There were two left rubber boots with fish scales all over them. There was a lobster buoy with a love poem carved on it: “Lobsters are red, bluefish are blue, I love you.” I always wondered how it ended up there until I met Bluefin Bill. He was ninety-seven years old and had only one eye. He lost his eye when a swordfish jumped into his lobster boat. He picked it up to throw it back. It slipped in his hand and its “sword” stuck in his eye and blinded it. Bleeding, he beat the swordfish to death and invited some friends over that night to eat it. Cleaning it, he sliced it up the belly. A snail shell necklace fell out that had a mermaid pendant attached to it. Although he had been blinded in one eye, he believed it was a sign. He thought maybe if he carved a love poem on one of his lobster buoys the mermaid would see it and fall in love with him. It was a stretch, but she did! She lived in a big tank in his living room until she died of old age two years ago. What a shame.
This was the best story ever. I was saving my money to buy the love poem buoy. In the meantime I could marvel at the rest of the inventory. There was a tea set with pictures of different insects in the cups. I liked the grasshopper the best. Then, there was a hat made out of a horseshoe crab painted turquoise blue. One more thing: a locked treasure chest. It was not for sale. For $10 you could hit it once with a length of pipe. If you broke it open, it was yours. It had been there 50 years. It was dented, but it was never broken open.
I almost lost the race. I took a shortcut through “The Devil’s Darning Needle” off of Ocean Point and ran aground. A large wave came along and lifted me off the ledge, and I sailed away and won the race. I couldn’t account for it, but the wave looked like it was smiling at me.
I started my tram-driving job on Monday. The Smiling Crow souvenier shop was our first stop. It had little lobster buoy necklaces strung on fishing line and hung on a rack. They were inscribed with the blind lobsterman’s love poem: “Lobsters are red, Bluefish are blue, I love you.” You read it and look at it and it’s like you better find somebody to love and that’s amore all rolled in to one. I bought a buoy and vowed to wear it all the time.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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