The Red-Haired Girl

Across the soccer field on which little girls roam and soccer balls flurry, I watch four high-school boys play basketball in the cage. They shout and show off for all the girls we boys imagine are ready to sit in worship of us and our skills. The boy in the grey shirt busts a killer crossover and rises high to take the shot. It should be enough that the kid in the red hat is falling down, that his ankles are so totally broken, but the shooter is imagining a red-haired girl who smiles and blinks her eyes at him from the sidelines. He can see her and the crowd gathered to see him play. And the distraction is enough. His shot goes awry. The crowd groans. His buddies, even the one picking himself up from the deck, laugh and the game goes on. He sneaks a quick look for the red-haired girl. If she were there she’d already be looking elsewhere, smiling at something else. She probably wasn’t even looking at him in the first place. And he remembers now that she’s not even real. He looks across the soccer field, past the little girls now circled around their coach. Behind them he sees the man in a chair, writing in his notebook, about a red-haired girl he used to know, and the kid wonders how this guy looks so familiar.

With Neko Case at the Temple

I sit outside the temple with Neko Case and my dog. None of us are Jewish, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Neko smokes cigarettes, the only thing I don’t like about her, and the smoke drifts by us on God’s own breeze. The dog, who doesn’t smoke (there is nothing I don’t love about her), sits low. She sniffs for scents more mysterious than cigarette smoke. Neko asks the dog a question about death. And, I suppose, life. The dog lifts her head. Sniffs the air. Stares at Neko, then licks her lips and yawns. Neko watches, drags on her cigarette and hangs her head as she exhales. Smoke envelops her red hair. I can’t see her face. Sitting between them, outside the temple, before which the rabbi now stands, I understand none of it. I feel as though it is all mystery. I don’t know why petting a dog always comforts. How cigarette smoke sometimes entices. What the Torah is saying as the Rabbi reads. I don’t even know why Neko Case is here or why she curses, butts her cigarette on her shoe, and goes off saying that she needs a guitar. The dog gets up, stretches, and follows her across the parking lot. That, at least, makes perfect sense sitting outside the temple alone under the blue sky and clouds of heaven.

Reeling Them In

My oldest daughter,

nine years old,
is quietly running a race
with forty or fifty other kids.
She is mid-pack at mid-race
and then in a loping,
almost bouncing gait,
reels in one, two, three and more
of the other children.

Near the finish,
two boys ahead of her 

give up and fall to walking,
hands on hips, panting.
She lopes past them,
and though I am fifty yards away
across the field, she is my girl,
and so I hear her wondering,
why are they stopping?
she doesn’t know what else to do
but run and run.

I can hear her at the finish,
only two people ahead of her,
failing to care about winning,
not noticing what she has done,
happy for other reasons
I can no longer remember or fathom.

Across the field I sit watching,
having whispered to her,
throughout the whole race
you do it, you go, honey.
keep reeling them in,
there is nothing that can touch you.

Rocket Fish

In the boat at dusk, alone. I lean out over the wooden side. Over the oarlock. I look down into grey-green water through which I can somehow see into the depths. The lake is calm, silent. When I lean out over the boat it doesn’t move. The water is undisturbed. Looking down I am horrified to see a giant fish swimming up at me. It lights the water. It’s mouth is a perfect circle. It swims upward in a straight line without moving its tail. This is a rocket blasting off from some underwater Cape Canaveral. My face is directly in its path. I am a target. It comes for me. I jump back and fall against the other side of the boat, my shoulders and head out over the edge. The boat is about to tip. I know that this is disaster. I cannot go into that water. The fish. The fish. Through my fish-eyes I see stars. Dusk has given way to darker night. I pray. I pray to the fish. The fish. My heart thunders. The boat rocks hard. My feet find purchase under the edge of the boat. I hold on. I hope. And the boat settles down. Splashes hard into the water. Without disturbing the still lake. I lie back against the side of the boat. Wondering. The fish. I’m afraid to look down. I look up, but there is only darkness.

The Tiger

I watched Snickers, our twenty-year-old cat, pace the downstairs this morning and thought of a Bengal tiger pacing her cage at the zoo. I looked up and zoo-goers peering in through the dining room windows. A woman held a small girl up high and pointed toward the cat. The little girl stared wide-eyed at it, looked back at the woman, her mother, and made an O with her mouth. I picked up Snickers, who seemed much heavier, padded to the window and held her up. The little girl became our eldest, the mother became my wife, I became a father tiger, and we all stared at one another like strangers slowly recognizing one another. Then I set Snickers down, looked out the window at the empty street, the grey sky, the rain coming down. I looked up the empty stairwell to where I knew you were all sleeping. Snickers padded by again. She looked up at me, opened her mouth, and roared something that I wish to God I could have understood. Then I left the zoo locking the cage tight behind me.

The Dogs of Memory

Here’s the things with memory: it dogs me. At this moment, I am being followed. By the ghost of my first-grade teacher whom I disappointed. By how I treated Allen Mawson, the things I said behind his back. Even by the award I won for a short story about a girl and a waiter in a restaurant crumbling into the Atlantic. I write memories down, but the pages stick to my elbow as I stand up and every step sticks more paper to the soles of my shoes. I tell my therapist about this stuff but my voice echoes and follows me out to my car which reminds me of the Volare I had long ago. The one I used to sometimes steer with my feet while my best friend laughed himself silly. The road was just something we drove across and left behind like some forgettable movie projected on the rearview mirror. Thinking carefully of that moment, my legs crossed one over the other as I sit in my therapist’s waiting room, I feel my toes grip the wheel and turn it this way and that. My friend’s laughter crowds out the dogs of memory barking in the distance as we drive away.

Waiting on Rain

The rain refused to come. The weatherman had predicted: Showers this morning. Heavy rains later in the afternoon. But morning stayed dry. And afternoon was windy but without precipitation. Early evening, the air smelled of rain. The temperature had fallen. Grey clouds were thick and unbroken. Outside, children and dogs played in yards. They hadn't watched morning news. Hadn't read the paper. They barely glanced at clocks and seemed content to talk to themselves and the dogs. Their eyes seldom glanced skyward. They didn't study the barometric pressure. Instead, they threw sticks for the dogs with little expectation that the dogs would retrieve them. No matter, they seemed to think, we'll get it and throw it again. I watched them from my chair, looking out my window. Wondering when it will be safe to go outside.