A WALK NEAR RECHARGE LAKE AND TWO TRUE STORIES

A WALK NEAR RECHARGE LAKE

AND TWO TRUE STORIES

1

I'm here in sandals to part the grass

with my toes, prairie grass

long enough to harbor quiet stories not easy

to find these days. Loud stories demand boots:

laying ties, felling timber

but the wind is very still today.

I must remove barriers

become attentive to subtlety:

the water hardly ripples

but does

toward no outlet

I can see

somehow sloughing the sky

into troughs

gathering bright shavings polishing

the heavy slate bellies of clouds.

Nameless birds call

from their ground nests.

This is the grace I've come to find

the patience that outlives tall

cottonwoods.

It starts from the dirt

and moves out

a quiet, slow dance

I join with my bare toes I'm that

trusting.

2

I have this one story

I keep trying to tell but I

always fail.

I'm three or four and have crawled

under the porch of one of the old

buildings at the college

where my father teaches.

I watch people through the wooden slats

walk past

sometimes turning to tramp over the boards above my

head.

I'm the troll under the bridge

silent, naked

waiting to pop out into the deadly light

and accost the laughing travelers

Who's that tramping over my bridge?

I slip off my clothes

in the smell of dead birds

and earthworms

in a hidden freedom

a secret power these people know

nothing about.

It's not over on the other side

where the clover seems thicker;

it's here, under the bridge in my

castle of dirt where

I relieve myself, finding an old notebook page to

wipe with.

Later, hand encased in my

father's, I see the place

glow behind the slats as we walk past

on the sidewalk.

The smell is still in my nose here, on

this paper.

3

I have one more story.

I'm fourteen

on a church trip at night.

On the bus, in my sleep

my left hand drops

into the deeper darkness of the aisle

my fingers brush something: a shoulder.

I'm suddenly awake with the choice before me;

I leave the hand there

bouncing, brushing softly with the sway of the

highway.

Time is lost in darkness

in the warmth of touching

in the warmth of my

imagining, the offer I'm making that might

be taken as no offer only sound sleep.

The blackness blossoms red as a hand brushes

mine and our fingers touch.

Light shoots through my arm there where I hold that soft

warm torch below my body.

Later, the hand moves mine down

past a V-neck I can only imagine

and places it like an offering

on the soft mound of skin above her heart

her nipple between my

fingers.

I ride the bus like that all night

instinctive as a baby

my eyes wide, taking in the blackness holding life

in my hand.