A new year

  I wanted to write something new and creative to post in these last few moments of the year, but my brain is not cooperating. I'm tired and scattered, and the sake we drank with dinner a few hours ago is probably not helping.
  Still--I wish for all of us a year of satisfying work, of strength in adversity and in monotony, of joy in unexpected places, of love given and received.
  I hear the first firecrackers going off...a little early, but sort of exciting, nonetheless. In a few minutes, we'll open the front door to welcome in the new year. Just before we completely shiver ourselves to pieces, we'll close the door, turn off the lights, and crawl into a nice warm bed.

The power of poetry—a work of wishful thinking

Shamba Ridu was a poet. So very sensitive was he, and such a master of the language, that he could write movingly on any subject under the sun—stink bugs, modern architecture, soft old shirts, the little bits of time found between the completion of one task and the beginning of another—and readers were moved to tears, even on the sixth or seventh reading. It was a gift.

It was a curse. Shamba longed to see a broken-down fence and not then immediately feel compelled to discourse on the unsustainability of boundaries. He wanted to experience the first waking moment of the day without having to look through the thesaurus of his mind for an equivalent to yellow that rhymed with rays (maize). Other people seemed to live without seeking the deeper meaning of a cup of coffee, and he longed to be one of them. They could write a letter that did not by the third line fall into iambic pentameter or disappear down a well of universal metaphor. He wanted a cigar to be a cigar and nothing more.

So one day, he put away his pens, his paper, his reference books, locked his door, and headed off down the street.

But his head wouldn’t stop. There was poetry in everything. Every object, every state of the weather, every word that people said, was so fraught.

If he could not get away from the poetry, was it because everything was significant? Did everything point to a deeper reality? Or was this all in his head? If it was reality, was it then his duty to bring it forth, to say to people: Look! Here is something fine and wonderful! Here is something deeply terrible! You must pay attention!

If it was only in his head, should he keep it to himself? Was he making himself crazy for no good reason?

Just then a woman came up to him. “Oh! Mr. Ridu! Your poem about the child in the doorway made me see my own children! I had forgotten in the business of preparing meals and mending clothes and all the exhausting duties of raising a family how much I loved them and how much himself each one is! I have been blessed all along, and you helped me to see it!”

Next to her stood four sturdy boys, happy, relaxed, and very obviously loved.

“Thank you,” he said, slightly dazed.

She shook his hand, gave him a kiss on the check, and strolled off down the street, surrounded by her children.

Rather stunned, he trailed on down to the park and sat down on a bench. A middle-aged man sat down at the other end of the bench.

“Shambu Ridu, isn’t it?” he said, turning halfway toward him. Shambu agreed that yes, he was he, and they shook hands.

“I read your bit in the Times a couple of weeks ago,” said the man. “You know, the thing about the moonrise over that little stretch of the river. I’ll have you know, it was your words that put the seal on the deal, so to speak. I’m with the Nature Conservancy, and we’ve been working for years to keep developers from cutting down all the trees and putting in a shopping mall. One of their people saw your poem and read it to his partners, and they agreed that nothing they built could possibly be worth the beauty they would destroy. The project has been called off, and the land has been donated to be used as a park and for wildlife restoration.”

And so it went for the rest of the day. Shamba heard their voices, responded to their responses to his work, but found himself listening to the music behind their stories. He finally wandered home, bemused. He pulled out a sheet of paper, pulled the cap off his favorite pen, and began to write.

Plains of forgiveness

Climb down to the plains of forgiveness

where the cool waters flow, oh,

you wait in the shade along the banks with your

wine of welcome and bread of life.

Oh, you call me, day and night, but it isn't my ears 
that hear your voice

I think you are the wish of my heart

and no more.

Jagged dry rock surrounds me: I can’t find any way down

on the wind a hint only

a far-off song

a faint green

Fairies of the fen

“Ma! They came again!” Coerl ran into the well-mudded woven house. “Ma! The fairies!”

“Did they? Did you bring in their dishes?”

“Oh!”

The child ran out into the grey dawn again and came back with a carved-wood bowl and a bucket. Not a trace was left of the food they had set out in them at sunset. Beodit had filled the bucket with fine loaves of bread and a half a wheel of cheese, while the bowl had been stacked with roots and half a dozen red apples. With winter coming on the fairies would be needing extra food, she knew.

“It is still our secret, is it not?” Beodit asked her tiny son. He suddenly ceased his cavorting around the small cottage and looked down at his feet.

“Who did you tell?” When he didn’t answer, she took a step forward, but the look on her face confused the boy and he could not answer. She did not look angry so much as afraid.

“Who did you tell?” This time fear was stronger and he began to cry.

“Mechlin! Only Mechlin!”The words began to tumble out. “He was bragging about the fine new shoes the fairies left him, and he said that his family was especially chosen because his da was a great warrior, and that the fairies would never come to us because I was a bastard, so I told him about the firewood and the new harness for the pony and the fish!”

His voice trailed off as he noticed the white face of his mother. “Did anybody hear you?” she asked.

“No. Nobody. I don’t think. I’m sorry!” he sobbed. “Are the fairies going to stop coming now?”

“I don’t know. But you must not so much as mention the fairies again outside this house. To anybody. There's no knowing who might hear. And I'll be speaking the Mechlin's ma, you can be sure.” Beodit gathered the boy into her arms until he quietened. “Now. Why don’t you wash out these dishes and put them away? By the time you finish, breakfast will be ready.”

This fragment seems to fit with the Marshes thick and waving poem...a later point in the story.

Ontario

Sometimes a story starts out as one thing, then turns out to be about something else entirely. Where this goes next...I can't even guess.

I put my finger on the map, and said I will go here. Besides, I liked the sound of the name. I liked that it was just a name to me, with no meaning, no associations. I didn’t know anybody there, I didn’t know when it had been settled, what Indian tribe had called it home, who lived there now. I didn’t know if it was in the mountains or on the plain. All roads are flat in Rand McNalley. But there were a lot more blue roads than red, and the cities were marked by smaller dots than the ones I was used to.

I gave the cat to Rita and loaded the car with all the warm clothes I had. It didn’t look like enough. I went to the Goodwill and bought another duffle bag full for a dollar a pound. Then I hit the Costco and Kmart for cases of meals in cans. My brother gave me his old sleeping bag and a couple of hundred dollars for gas.

Rita and Pepper waved goodbye from the driveway we shared. I took off on a green spring day, under an arch of new budded sycamores, looking for—somewhere far away. Something different. Seasons. Snowmen. A wolf. It’s funny the way dreams send us on our way when good advice leaves us paralyzed.

Sycamores became pines became scrub. Forty miles of roadside orchards gave way to patchy grasses and then the oil fields. I hit the 5 at eighty and scooted north with a tail wind.

Funny about those dreams. I tried not to think about them during the day, and tried even harder when the sun went down. They had started just before Thanksgiving and by Christmas had become a permanent part of my mental furniture. The funny thing was, I couldn’t figure out any explanation for their appearance. Nothing had changed in my life. No new lover, no break-up. Nobody had died, things were fine at work, my credit cards were paid off. I had plenty friends to meet at the pub, better friends to meet when I really needed to talk, and who called me for the same.

At first I didn’t think too much about it. The same kind of dream three times in one week was weird, but hardly the strangest thing that ever happened to anybody. The same kind of dream every time I closed my eyes for three months—that was scary. I tried staying up really late, thinking I would be too tired to dream. I tried a couple of beers. I tried having friends over for grown-up slumber parties. I slept with the lights on. I went to the doctor.­­

The dreams kept coming. Not exactly the same thing every night; no, more like the same story told from a different point of view every time. I didn’t think I could stand to watch the execution through the eyes of yet another witness. Quite a crowd had turned out to watch. I might have the same dream for years before I ran through the audience.

I needed a new place to sleep.

I had enough money saved up to see me through a couple of months off work. 

Hence, the map.

Spring nights were still cold, but I stayed in campgrounds to save money whenever I could, in spite of the speculative looks I got from the sloppy men who slurped and burped cheap beers at stained picnic tables carved with the initials of bored teenagers. I had cause to bless the inventor of the ATM card a couple of nights when the night winds shoved rain right through the ripstop nylon walls of my tent.

The dreams followed me. Luckily the witnesses didn’t seem to be very involved with the victim, so once the hanging was over I was able to roll over and go back to sleep. I had great hopes that by the time I got to Montana, I would be standing so far back in the crowd that I wouldn’t have to see it at all.

Hope is a liar and a cheat.

You can tell her I said so.