The Trees Overhanging the Bedroom

My brother assures me that the trees overhanging the bedroom are just fine. But what does he know? He’s an architect. We need an arborist. My wife and me. Because at night I hear things. Wind. Falling leaves. Branches breaking over our bed. At night I fear that the trees will crash down on us. A collection of maples. Mistakes that grew for decades. Chances. Now overhanging the house. Casting shadows on our bedroom. My brother says, they’re hardwoods. Strong. They will last forever. Almost. But he lives by himself. No wife beside him in the night. No trees over his bedroom. The interweaving of our trees is complicated. And the way they hang suspended over us is more than I can understand. The dark is deep and the wind is strong. I lie awake some nights wondering what will happen. I hear branches whisper, til death do us part. The wind roars. My brother knows nothing.

Cliffs Notes

At the bookstore I send my children on their way. Stay together, I tell them. As if together they can face the dangers of this world and their futures. I linger near the front. Holding a book about a woman who has fallen apart. Her father died. Her family scattered. She married. Then divorced. She broke down. I begin reading, trying not to flip to the ending. To the solution. Trying not to cheat. The urge is so strong. The door behind me opens. A woman with three children. Stay together, she tells them. They scatter. She watches for a moment then looks at a book on the table we share. Her hair is dyed blonde. Bobbed. Her face is tan in March. She is lip-gloss moist. Her body is tall and thin. She has sensual fingers. I swear it. She puts down a book and walks away toward new fiction. I write her story in my head as if it were mine to tell. I’ve forgotten the book I hold in my hands. My children run toward me, books in their hands. Can we buy them? Can we? We walk to the register. I pay for three books. At home, I hold the book in my hands and wonder why I bought it. The ending seems so obvious now.

The Sacred Bookstore

In the sacred bookstore we kneel in the aisles to turn the pages of our scripture. Our voices drop to a hush. Our eyes look downward. We all turn off our phones. My daughters float in baptismal gowns reading about fairies and girls who tame wolves. My wife searches for words about her pain, lips moving, eyes nearly closed. My mother reads to my father in a whisper that carries. Priests and nuns, rabbis and imams, saints and sinners gather in the sacred bookstore. They pass notes and collection baskets. Sip coffee and eat wafer thin biscuits. Outside, cars roar through the streets. The market is down. Politicians stand on street corners shouting their way to salvation. The sky itself falls. In the sacred bookstore clerks murmur an incantation. The customers respond. We all say amen. I look up to the vaulted ceiling. Frescoed on the stone, God hands Adam an apple. Eve sits nearby, reading a book, paying them no mind. I kiss the binding of my book. Close my eyes. And pray the words written inside the pages.  

Daylight Savings

In the dark morning after the time change you wonder about all the lies you’ve been told. Work hard and you’ll succeed. True love lasts. Father knows best. There is a God. You have tried hard to believe in these things. But the light is gone from the morning and the clocks are all wrong. You’re awake but not hungry. You just know you should be somewhere else. You aren’t sure where. You’re no longer sure who you were meant to be. You feel alone and out of time. So you stand very still. In the kitchen. Facing the window over the sink. Arms stretched out away from your body. Toes pointed. That’s when you feel it. The Earth. Your home. It spins on its axis. You feel the shape of that sphere below you. There’s the sun at the center of things. The galaxy of its sister stars. The universe that is everything. And there you are. When you open your eyes, the morning sun has dawned. Your heart beats a steady rhythm in perfect standard time.  

The Cat Told Me She Was Dead

The cat told me she was dead. My mother. I looked into the cat's eyes. How would you know? I asked. And how would you tell me. The cat said again, She is gone. I waited, but cats don’t elaborate. The cat bit at its claws. It licked its paw clean. The cat shook its head. It blinked, then stared at me. I tried to stare back. But you know how cats are. They’ve had more practice. I didn’t stand a chance. Looking down, I saw that the floor needed sweeping. So much hair. I couldn’t remember when I had last mopped. And the dishes, the drainboard, the ketchup spilled inside the fridge. I wondered what my mother would have thought of these things. How had she gone so wrong with me. I felt her disappointment. And I felt the phone ringing in my pocket. The cat walked out of the room. It found a place in the sun and lay down. I looked at the phone and saw that it was my mother calling. From the other room, I heard the cat say, I wouldn’t answer that. Some things you trust your cat about.

All the Way to Disney World

Your father could have shut the engine off and lit up a Camel, and you could have coasted all the way to Disney World, the warm wind wafting through the open windows, the wind lifting your sombreros up a little, then working its way out the window again.

John Hodgen,

"After The Reading, Driving Back to Massachusetts With Jim Bescht, I Think Of The Men Who Hold The World In Their Hand"

Except your dad smoked Winchesters—little cigars, they were called—and your mom smoked Kents one after another. And you had only one brother. He sat in the back seat while you rode in the way-back, staring at where you had come from. You had no sombrero. You organized your things. Tried to sleep. Counted miles. Told yourself stories. You imagined who you might be someday.

I see you looking backward at me through the windshield. I wave. But there’s no way to communicate. No way to tell you the secrets of what you will become. I look at your face. I know you. I remember. I miss you so much.

The car stalls. I pull over. Lean my head back and close my eyes. There’s nothing I could tell you anyway. You’re already so far away. Your brother wants you to listen to something. Your mother passes a sandwich back. Your father drives. You ask, how much farther, Dad? He says, it’s a ways away. I can’t remember if you believe him or if you feel sure that you will never arrive. The road is so long, forward and back, moving fast or sitting still.

Geology

I ask my friend, a geologist, could the glacial ice really have been a mile thick. I hold my hand a mile over my head. He says, yes, without having to think for even a moment. Without having to make himself believe in this scripture. I hear the awe in his answer. Reverence. I nod, closing my eyes. We bow together at the altar of true grandeur. Our eyes scan the topographic map spread before us. He points there, there, there at drumlins. Glacial deposits particular to this region. He says, see how they are all inline. A wonder. Two nights from now, lying in bed, I will try to read Robert Bly’s poems from a Florida Key looking at the Jesuitical Florida waters. I will be distracted from his words by the wind blowing snow and ice hard against the house. My mind frozen in a mile of ice. The microscopic motion of it. The momentum. It’s impossible power to erase the world. I’ll listen hard. Straining to hear if the glacier is advancing. I’ll close the book and my eyes. I’ll try to sleep. Wondering what world I will find when I awake.