One Night With Syrah

Road trip, Northern California, Winter 

Alone with two bottles of Syrah and ocean surf,

Gold Beach, Fern Canyon, redwoods, Beethoven,

a moonless night, a starry-starry sky, galaxies,

chilly air, and a red sleeping bag.

There are sparkling past futures; there are ponds, lakes, 

diamond shoes, and a road to nowhere which ends up being

somewhere near someplace, with hands and arms flailing, 

begging for a ride to Eureka, California.

Look. There are clouds; now there aren’t.

Look again, there are stars, like Deneb and Betelgeuse,

and we can sail away like ancient mariners on a silvery sea, 

breathing deep, but now our lives are shorter, so let’s eat pizza

and BBQ, drink more wine, tequila, and eat tacos and carne asada.

Let’s give coffee to this drunken madness, then we can dance.

Enya is singing in the blue lagoon, in the silence 

of the months ahead, and in the noise of the months behind. 

Now the hellos, goodbyes, deaths, burials, trains, planes, 

and art left over from the good old days, the blue days, 

the windy days, the rainy days, and all the days 

of city traffic that went nowhere fast.

From the silence of lost loves,

the wind of grasslands and oceans,

we finally sing “Hallelujah,” “White Rabbit,” 

“Mairzy Doats,” and an old Vernon Dalhart classic.

Settling in my sleeping bag, unafraid of the noise 

of forest darkness, the universe reveals a secret,

and I sleep.

From: Dreams, Memories, And Leaps Into The Wilderness

Unpublished MS p. 11