Archive for January, 2008

You let go of so much worry and resentment that you are surprised by how much still remains

Like cashing a big stack of checks at a small grocery store
Like a hole in the wall that gets bigger as you look at it

Your plan is a black and white subway map upon which you build little covered bridges.

Your play involves a portly bearded fellow with a secret. He is rebuilding a small silver engine he calls The Lynx. The actor, however, gets sick, and the drama coach asks you to fill in.

Rain is pelting down as you hurry up the gravel lane from the lake. A squirrel stands up as if to ask how wet it’s going to get. Very wet, little friend. It is Noah’s flood, only we’re not saving the animals this time. The boat you board—a wind-up metal toy with a perfect patina of rust—is a very comfortable place to ride out the storm, rather like a summer house with an ocean under the basement. From the vasty deep you haul a long chain that goes through a hole in the cellar floor. The sky darkens, thunder booms, and you scramble to see what’s on the end. Up comes a flat paper bag decorated with a 1950s-style geometric print. Inside you find old road maps and a short-sleeved striped cotton button-down that you lost on vacation—the third lost shirt that’s come back to you!

A cut on your bare ankle
Bleeds onto the theater floor
The neighborhood burns
Around the mean Irish bar

A garden encased in plastic mesh
Your clumsy friend keeps accidentally shooting his gun
What’s it take to get a drink around here?

The communication device like a cellphone
Double-wrapped in broad green leaves
Hangs on a vine from low branches

When you tell him that the tree-hugging couple was mauled to death by mountain wolves, he sneers a little and says no one will really miss that cowboy hat. You suppose they were rather sanctimonious. But still. Building a bridge across the chasm was a tricky business; they had to maneuver the logs into the skein of ropes, a monumental macramé.