...Again

...Again

-----The road is an icy snake. She drives. We pass the wine. In the pleasure of each others company we laugh at our pain. She is a child of the north, born in this ghastly and awesome wilderness, and some suck behind the bar in Soldatna tells her she has to put her shoes on or leave. She pretends to put on her shoes. Simon calls his job to tell them he won't be making it in tomorrow. In the back seat Kim is suffering. Familiar sights flash by on this road we have traveled often before. The scrawny trees dipped in white, old shacks and frozen ponds, the approaching mountains grabbing more and more of the darkening sky. I drive as we head into them. The road is an icy snake.
-----I am glad to find that my father is home as this renders the trip more practical. Otherwise it is just a fencing match from far corners in bondage. He doesn't look on her with the same adoration I do. Arrangements are made and we press on into the town. This is our little time, our little drama, dropped for years and taken up again at this, our convenience.
-----And it is the city we remember, although now the mountains across the bay are garishly lit by the lights of the prison. She buys the room and I buy dinner. We head to the arena of Tony's Bar. I begin cigarettes again after six months or so. They are necessary for this game, little burning swords, symbols of our breath and our nature. And what is said in blur of smoke and wine absorbed in a living reminiscence? We had sex once long ago in a lot out behind this place. It was grass and trees and bourbon and kisses. Now it is a parking lot for the Marine Science Center. She's fond of my women who are no longer my women and we need each other across our ghosts in this dim and smoky light.
-----So we move on and in the Yukon a ghost takes on flesh and stands between us. I buy more wine seeking to pull her away, angry that her intimacy should be anyones but mine. I carry her shoes. Her freedom is to walk barefoot on the ice littered street. Of course it's too cold. I help her on with her shoes, fumbling with her wide feet, impatient to hide her from the insipid history which surrounds us. In the room she pushes me away but lets me rub her back. She hurts. She still desires him. She won't let it happen again. We sleep.
-----And so I am here and she is there. She wants the north. I want the south. She has the south. I have the north. I want to marry her so I can help her keep track of her checkbook. We laughed at that one.

-----I walk in the cold country to a lake I used to swim in, earning a reputation for being crazy. It is fantastically bright. The noon sun, low in the south, warms the black fur of my hat, I have been here two days and it is the first time I leave the house except to get wood for the voracious stoves. I have been resting, dreaming of her when awake and of strange lands when sleeping.I remember the wrinkled petals of her intimacy, the raven darkness of her being flashing from her hair and eyes, the strange softness of her skin like velvet made from flint, her laughter, her hunger, how I chased her long before into a future which looms again in hopeful promise. I fondle her ghost. The mountains thrust dizzy white into aching blue. The black in the trees is almost shattered by this. The lake steams. The sun just points at her.

01/10/89

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