Words fell on him like a bucket of rocks from the angry woman.

Moon

I saw the moon you looked at too. I am glad you saw it. I am glad you told me you saw it. I was in my truck. I wanted to pull over, park and sit out in the field on its highest point and look. Just to look at the moon , an old friend.

Earlier that evening I had read W. B. Yeats’ poem , “Adam’s Curse”. His moon was an earlier moon – a dusk moon.

“And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;

That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.”

And I remembered Michael Herr’s moon in his book, Dispatches, concerning Vietnam.

“the moon came up nasty and full, a fat moist piece of decadent fruit.”

I thought of these two moons as I looked at my moon. My moon was hooked in the sky much later than W.B.’s, so it wasn’t “washed” out looking, it was a big splatch of yellow, but not the yellow of “decadent fruit” like Michael’s either. My moon was the moon of an exuberant child who had colored outside the lines with a massive yellow crayon. The yellow spilled over into the sky – greater than the image itself. Larger than life. Yet it was still a two dimensional moon. Why?

I never did pull over to sit and watch, but kept driving to the bar while watching the moon and having these thoughts rumble through my head.

The bar was kind of nice – the music 60’s rock & roll, I danced, but I am the type that ends up entertaining the old women and the fat girls. I guess being single and kind of faded I am prey to all sorts of desperate people. But it was distracting recreating the movements and rhythms of an earlier time.

I came home and wrote, “the moon looked like someone colored outside the lines”.

This morning you called and mentioned the moon. I wanted you to know I saw it too. And I have.

My Last Dance with Charlotte

I exercised the other day. I don't exercise much anymore. I am in my late fifties but the other evening in a motel in Ft. Smith, Arkansas, I got out of bed from watching television to set the alarm which was across the room. I shut off the television and turned on the radio to dial in the public radio station. The most beautiful music was on the air. "American Angels" was playing by "Anonymous Four".

I turned out the lights and began slowly stretching and extending my arms, stretching my shoulders and rolling my neck. It felt good to move. Soon I was remembering Charlotte, my ballet dance partner 39 years ago, from Alabama and I stood up a little straighter, tucked in my buttocks, sucked in my stomach, raised my shoulders and waited for her to come twirling into my arms. I danced to her memory the best I could. Slowly moving my stiff under-used muscles as smoothly and rhythmically as I was able to the sweet music filling the room. I lightly jumped leftward and rightward while delicately moving my ballet arms in a country boy's idea of Nureyev. Anyone watching would have seen an old paunch bellied toad of a man doing an arthritic dance in the darkened sour smelling room with matted carpet of a mundane motel with semi trucks in the parking lot.

Everything external was incongruous with the internal visions in the old man's head. His body was helping him remember the time he was youthful, vibrant, and strong, dancing with a beautiful cheery dark haired girl who smiled and laughed and was excited to have a dance partner. His hip bones and shoulder bones creaked and crackled, popped and snapped, but he kept moving and stretching his arms, legs, and back to the heavenly voices coming from the radio, in the dark, in the bright white room of his memory. The crowds were raucous, his partner's muscles taut, well trained and warm. Her movements fluid. They rolled and strolled the dance boards together, their bodies singing to the sky, the sunshine, and the sweet winds of joyous movement.

Charlotte died several years ago from an accidental gunshot wound.

Hide and Seek

"...7, 8, 9, 10, Here I come, ready or not!" And yet I hesitate to uncover my eyes, to remove my fingers from my face. In the soft warm darkness of counting I can see you standing before me smiling, your hands quietly folded behind you, you swaying a little - delightfully whispering, "Here I am, come get me."

If I open my eyes now and you are gone I will be alone. The bright day will glare off the trees and grasses. In the golden empty air there will be no coolness of you standing before me if I remove my soulful thinking fingers from my alone face.

I like having you near me, in my head, munching on memories of togetherness. My hands are bound to my face by silver threads of remembering - of having. The golden empty air must not pierce these dark irises of once having seen.

Holding shadows of your nearness I am afraid to become quite alone again.

Illness

I tried to read tonight, but the words came into my brain little squiggly figures with no voices. Mute arms and legs dangling, twisted and upraised. Somehow a switch is off or perhaps a fuse is blown. The circuitry stops behind my eyes. A mirror can read as I read. Tonight. Someone's dirty laundry is stuffed up my nose. Wrinkled socks and stained underwear. I tried to go to bed. It is misery. I could just as well sleep on the top of a post. My joints sing to me in the off key style of a tomcat. I feel like one of Picassos's cubist paintings tonight. My body parts have become disjointed, separated from the main, and lay scattered across the canvas of the mattress.

Every part beckons for attention. I must gather them up, bundle them together and rise. Watch television, take them for a walk outside. Come on follow me. The night is warm. The rubber plant died last week, but this night is warm. Look at the sky, see the stars, yes clouds too, and the leafless trees, see how the night sky rests on their branches. The body rebels. It is as futile as keeping children quiet on a bus. "Jimmy sit down, Ronnie don't pull Julie's, hair. A nose bleed? What happened Tommy? Connie don't swear, I don't care if Dennis farted. Dennis try to control yourself. Sit down! Quiet! Please!


Illness is not glamorous.

Someone

I found someone who would talk to me.
He is in a book and he is dead,
but he is more alive and more
important to me than anyone in town.

Three Stories

My daughter wrote three stories.
One about a bear and a balloon.
One about a cat with lots of ribbons.
One about a dog that could talk.