In Dreams

In dreams when I'm not here, I see
this green, this sky, this air.  I watch
my feet along this path, following
bunchberry down to the water, where
no things matter, save dragonflies
black and copper.

It seems we choose at every turn our own
way home.  When I sit idling at a light
on 53, a crow stalking along the shoulder
eyes me.  I hear not radios then, but ravens,
how they called on and off for days,
and I was there.

A hawk screams.  It's June.  Wildflowers
sprawl in a haze beyond the door, yellow
and blue.  In January, shadow behind me,
I count tracks in snow — deer, wolf, hare —
feed chickadees and the fire, and no desire
for more.  If one day I should go,

you will know where to find me.

Happy Endings

My friend Gayle's face always looked crooked in the bathroom mirror when we stood next to each other. She lived across the backyard and had a playhouse. She had a ghost in the basement and liked to play Little Dolls. Mostly we played Kidnap and Murder. I could get her to do just about anything.

Once I got her to ask me to sleep over. We had Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee and played phone tricks and watched Twilight Zone. When her mother finally turned the light out, I fell apart and had to go home. I might've been bossy but I was also a spastic homesick crybaby. I didn't get over the homesick part until I was twenty-five. I'm still bossy.

Gayle's mother was from Florida and had dyed black hair and red toenails. She was overweight but knew how to wear it. She wore pedal pushers and hung a sign in her kitchen: Why is there always so much of the month left at the end of the money? She and my mother would get together for coffee at each other's dinette tables. Afterwards Gayle and I would count the lipsticked cigarette butts and promise to stay best friends.

Our mothers were best friends until Gayle's mother had an affair with the butcher across First Avenue. The store where the butcher worked had wooden floors and his apron was always bloody. Gayle's father worked in the mine and on washdays his overalls hung on the clothesline like so many bodies. He never said much, but he must have said something, because Gayle's mother lost 50 pounds and went back to Florida. She left her husband, her kids and the butcher behind, but she took along the father of another friend of ours. Eventually they got married, and she became Mrs. Robertson.

Once, years later, my mother ran into Gayle's mother out of the blue, in a department store a couple of towns over. The Graduate had just been released and my mother couldn't help herself. "Why, Mrs. Robertson!" she exclaimed, and giggled about this for years.

Meanwhile, Gayle's father got remarried and started talking more. His new wife wore glasses and played cards. Occasionally they played Pinocle and drank highballs with my parents. By this time Gayle and I were in high school, our friendship lightyears behind us. We moved in different solar systems. Occasionally our orbits intersected, and we'd briefly acknowledge one another, spaceships passing in the night.

When my lying son-of-a-lying-son-of-a-bitch boyfriend broke my heart, I began nonstop spastic crying. After a few weeks, my mother sent me into the backyard. After a few hours, Gayle walked over and sat beside me. Her face wasn't crooked. I wanted to get her to do something...play dolls...make pizza...change my life. But it was enough that I got her to come over.

Eventually Gayle moved to Florida and disappeared. Florida and California are similar that way, a couple of black holes sucking up all who come within a hair's breadth of their force fields. Meanwhile, I gave away my dolls and emigrated to the other end of the state and changed my life.

At our twentieth class reunion, I looked around for Gayle but didn't spot her. Though I spotted plenty of other sordid vignettes that made Gayle's mother look like the Avon Lady. Not the least of which was the fact that the Reunion of the Class of '68 broke all previous records for alcohol-consumption, evidenced by the handful of its constituents found sleeping under the bar at the Elks Club the next morning when the maintenance crew showed up for work. I was not among them. All's well that ends well.

Only, if Life's a continuum, then nothing ends. Everything just goes on and on, one thing after another, all smoke and mirrors and ghosts and lies. But it's Valentine's Day, we have to toast something. So here's to the illusion of a happy ending. And here's to you, Mrs. Robertson, I hope you got yours.

Call Waiting

I wish I could translate this ringing in my ears. The Muse might be trying to fax me.

When I was a kid, lying in bed at night, I heard the marching of many soldiers. On and on they'd march, in perfect synchronicity, night after night. My mother would finish another chapter in "The Borrowers" and turn off the bedside lamp, and I'd be lulled toward sleep by the unerring rhythm of those endless pairs of steady moving feet. Not until much later did it occur to me it was my own heart pumping my own blood that I was hearing. As a kid this thought would've unnerved me, far more than those patient marching soldiers.

But this ringing is different. Probably it's the Bell That Tolls For Thee. So far it's in the upper registers, no funereal depth charge rumble demanding my attention, ala, I am the ghost of Christmas yet to come! It's been with me for a few years now, like a soundtrack. It varies in decibel level, similar to the way in which the singing of crickets can suddenly become deafening, whereas a microsecond earlier one was lost in one's thoughts, unaware of the larger world, entombed in utter silence.

Speaking of which. I'm beginning to believe that Silence should be moved to the top of the Endangered List. Without a respect for Silence, or an understanding of the ramifications of its loss, none of the rest of it is possible. Silence is an integral component of all aspects of conservation and protection and general planet-saving. Am I wrong? Delusional? Hearing voices?

It's appalling how loud life has become. Even up here on the Tundra. I long for a good old-fashioned blizzard, like in the Old Days. Five or six or fourteen feet of smothering, sound-proofing snow, rendering the town...the county...the Midwest...the Northern Hemisphere...dumbstruck in an hermetically-sealed safe room of stillness. Man, I wish I could astral project to upstate New York right now. (Note to self: Astral project to woods to nullify snowblower factor.)

How about this: National Blackout Day. Or this: National Turn-It-Off Day. Or this: National Shut-The-Fuck-Up-And-Give-It-A-Rest Day.

In bed at night I dream of The Cabin. I dream of the Moose Wallows, a remote wetland about a mile-and-a-half back into the woods, discovered by accident while following old deer trails one blissfully aimless afternoon many years ago. I imagine a quiet so complete that a ruffed grouse moving along the forest floor sounds like an approaching Sasquatch. Another creature who seems to have been able to survive without a cell phone.

In bed at night I hear the shuffling of many ruffed grouse. Against that ubiquitous ringing ringing ringing in the background. Which, if it is The Muse, She's nothing if not persistent. Maybe She's stuck on Redial. More likely it's some cold-calling MuzeWannabeBitch trying to break into the biz. Who, if she ever does get through (probably during the dinner hour), will no doubt introduce herself with those dreaded words, "How are you doing this evening?", to which, before slamming the phone down, I once famously replied, "Sorry, but I'm just not interesting!"