On the Seawalla community gallery of new writing, art and commentary hosted by Ron Slate

Flight or Invisibility

 

Driving Nebraska under a sweep of broom-tailed clouds,

they played a game to pass the time. Dead-

not-dead. She said Maya Angelou. Dead. And he said,

Dick Cheney. Not dead. But his heart doesn’t work, she said.

Robin Williams. Dead. Deborah Harry … She said, Hmm.

And then he said, What about things that make you go

Hmm?  Have there been more days in your life when you

were in love or more days not in love? Which do you prefer,

wind in the pines or the applause of rain? If there is

a flock of birds singing in a tree, is that one song or several?

Have you had more bad boyfriends or more good dogs?

Then she said, What power would you choose, flight

or invisibility? And he thought awhile and said, Flight,

because he wouldn’t trust his invisible self. There were

three crows and there was a road that unrolled ahead

like a strap of black tape. It takes one owl to make a moon,

he said. She answered, It takes two horses to make a pasture.

She closed her eyes and slept to the trance of tires.

And then the sky opened and the clouds were gone. And the crows.

And all that space above Nebraska seemed like silence not sky.

And the road led inward not outward. And after

some miles she opened her eyes and said,

More Days. Alive. Good dogs. Many Songs. One way or another.

 

*     *     *     *     *

 

Fiddle Bow, Cricket’s Dream, Hope

 

The light of a thin moon, translucent

As a single page in my mother’s Bible.

 

Emmett Till crying out in the Mississippi night.

Matthew Shepherd crying out in the Wyoming night.

 

The wind sounds like a fiddle bow

Drawn across a saw-toothed blade.

 

How did all that hatred make its way

From Mississippi, 1955, to Wyoming, 1998.

 

Old sins; long shadows.

And I do believe in the separation of church & hate.

 

*

 

Did you ever get the feeling that it’s all

Just a cricket’s dream in the dark?

 

When I think of God I feel alone;

When I’m alone, I sometimes think of God.

 

On the screen, the photo of the grieving woman’s scream —

A mother opens her mouth & we hear a massacre.