Monday, December 21, 2009

Trucking

~
Merrick & Okum

From Alaskan In The Hinterlands

It's not a large Radio Flyer.
In fact, it didn't hold my brother and I comfortably at all. I'm smaller by five years so I sit up front under the handle. His legs are balanced dangerously on the thick rims so he can use his heels as breaks. I'm suppose to help steer, though really my dimpled hands are just keeping warm under his and he likes the job of steering. We're in a high speed race car hitting the barely-paved slope, low to the ground, crunching gravel louder than a logging truck. I mean, we're fast!

Now. The wagon I pull in my dream is filled with precious things, stacked high and tight. I'm trucking it along the side of a mountain road this late, purple evening. The occasional headlights of on-coming cars don't know what to do with me, high beams or low. I'm straining to keep it upright and keep a steady pace.
Mocking bird, two lengths ahead is hop-loop bouncing, straight tail up, whortling foreign translations. Ma says they're spies who tell our secrets to the gods.

I wake up knowing the dream is about learning to use the internet and how to write. This is a learning process that's taking place in public. I've always crouched on a marble boulder in the middle of the river and told my tales to Raven. He laughs and tells his friends who gleefully bounce my stuff back and forth between each other, the mountains, forest, and glaciers. Any feedback I get is highly personalized. And private.

Though outdoors.

Dilemma and odd circumstances. I'll sleep on it.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

A Turning Tide Goes Out

My message is written and stoppered in amber glass stout and battered
Now to walk back to the redwoods where I last saw the sea wild
I'll toss it with a might to just the right current and stay
high on the outcrop watching it glint away

Old woman, return now down the well-worn path
Cozy-up in a cabin built by love and wonder till you're frail
what might come of your heart's desire

The wind is mixing with birch smoke
It's sweetness is fluttering across the face of the moon
I can hear the tide low against the shore
Light, careful, foot steps, swishing in the beach grass

My heart jumps and eyes tingle
Imagine
From Alaskan In The Hinterlands
Illustration, Girl Beside A Stream by Arthur Rackham via Creative Commons