Asia’s Rain

She lost her first song
Somewhere in the driving rain
While someone listened

            It’s fall and the lake is all but deserted.  The bikini-clad co-eds of pre-Labor Day have been replaced on the cool sand by a few rangy seagulls still expecting someone to drop a french-fry.  They will have to wait through the long Central New York winter until the improbability of spring is finally punctuated by Memorial Day and the re-opening of the concession stand.  They will be gone by the end of next week.

            Light jackets, sweaters, and windbreakers shuffle along the sand-strewn pavement before disappearing into the cave-like openings where dirt paths await their brief annual blanket of red and brown and yellow leaves.  So beautiful.  So dead.  But the leaves are not yet ready to let loose of the branches.  They grip tightly and laugh at the feeble breezes.  They will succumb.  A sudden vision of gray bone bare branches rattling in the late fall wind invades my pleasant reverie.  I shake it off quickly and return to my present contentment on this comfortable wooden bench.

            The air smells like a house that has just been cleaned by a woman who is waiting for her lover to arrive for an extended visit while her husband is away.

            A poem begins to form in my mind.  I reach into my pocket to retrieve my notebook and pencil and in turning slightly to do so I notice a small girl of five or six standing just behind and to the side of my bench.  She is small and frail.  She is wearing a Sunday dress that was once blue, but is now pale enough to qualify as gray.  There are water stains at the hem of the skirt.  Her hair is long, as if it has never been cut and as rangy as the feathers on the seagulls still flitting around, screaming in search of a handout.  The girl’s eyes are huge and much bluer than her dress ever could have been; they are heartbreak eyes.  Her cheeks are stained with tears that could have been cried a few minutes or a thousand years before.  The word ‘waif’ comes immediately to mind.

            She stares at me with those big blue eyes and true to my first impression, I feel my heart begin to break.  I try to stop the heartbreak from spreading by smiling at her, although I know it is futile.  I know prophetically that this little blue-eyed waif in her water-stained dress with tear-stained cheeks will break my heart more completely than any lover I have ever had.  The rapidity with which I have given my heart to this little girl frightens me.  It seems as unnatural to me as going straight from fall to spring without the slow, dull pain of winter.  And yet it happens.  She doesn’t smile back at me; she holds my gaze with a look that is searching for something, almost a hungry look.  My heart beats four times and I recognize her look as one of someone who is trying to decide if someone can be trusted.

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This road, by its firm, flat existence
admits of the presence of other people
whether yesterday or just beyond
my own short horizon
they have been here; they are here
with me now
upon, within
the solid rock and planned layers
the movement up and down
this valley’s natural contours

Damn this road
and how it wanders
through a calm and peaceful place
while mocking my solitude
I spit to profane the sacred path
to proclaim my own holiness
where future pilgrims
will in ignorance trespass

I am alone, I cry inside my mind
where the road does not exist
but my feet disagree
and quietly arbitrate my relationship
with this road
this never-ending road

It’s been a long time since I’ve dreamed of flying or floating or even just doing that thing where I’m running along and I fall forward and find myself skimming along the ground.  Or, there’s the one where I climbed a tree all the way to the top until it bent over and catapulted me all the way over to the top of another tree.  I also classify most swimming dreams in this same category because usually I am swimming very fast, like flying, and sometimes I actually launch up out of the water like a dolphin.  The point is, it’s been a long time, years, since I’ve had any sort of dream like this.

Over the past few years the most common re-occurring theme in my dreams is fishing.  I know it sounds innocent, but the fishing is always wrong.  I’ll be fishing in a place where you just wouldn’t expect to find anything worth fishing for, like a fountain or a shallow swamp or the grassy low ground of a freeway interchange that’s been flooded after a big storm.  Then there’s my fishing tackle; it’s all wrong too.  I’ll be fishing with those big lures with feathers all over them that are designed for catching marlins or something, not whatever lives in the wrong places where I am fishing.  Or there was the time when I had a hot dog threaded onto my hook like a big stiff worm.  Yeah, I know, it’s sexual as hell.  But maybe a hot dog is just a hot dog.  Finally, I always catch something, but whatever I catch is also wrong.  I once caught a pure white dolphin.  Another time I caught an octopus that had hair all over it.

Wrong place, wrong bait, wrong fish.  It’s kind of obvious what it adds up to:  wrong life.  Going after the wrong things in the wrong places and using the wrong approach.

Last week I was a project manager for a big software development company; next week I’m going to be a farmer.

“Two weeks notice?  We’re in the middle of an eighteen month project and you give me two weeks notice?  It’s gonna take me at least a month just to get HR to approve the paperwork for a replacement.  Six weeks to sort through résumés and do interviews.  Whoever I choose is going to want to give their employer at least four weeks notice, and then it’ll take another month to get them up to speed.  I had a boss who used to say that new people were useless for the first six months.  Took ‘em that long just to figure out where the bathrooms were.”

“Come on Dave, you know Karen is ready to step in and take over this project tomorrow.”

“You’re not leaving tomorrow.”

“Two weeks.”

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One night as the Spirit of the Earth and the Spirit of the Sky were walking together, they saw something they had never seen before–a Man.

The man was asleep.

Both Spirits fell in love with the man.

“When he awakens, I will call to him to come and live with me,” said the Spirit of the Sky.

“When he awakens,” replied the Spirit of the Earth, “I will call to him to live with me.”

When the sun came up, the Man awoke.

The Spirit of the Sky called to the man: “Come live with me!”

And the voice was so sweet and strong that the man leaped into the Sky.

Then the Spirit of the Earth called to the man: “Come live with me!”

And the voice was so sweet and strong that the man stretched his legs toward the Earth.

All day long the Spirit of the Sky called to the man and each time he leaped into the Sky.

And all day long the Spirit of the Earth called to the man and each time he stretched toward the Earth.

The man followed the voices of the Spirits all day long until the sun went down.  Then, exhausted, the man fell asleep once again.

The Spirit of the Sky and the Spirit of the Earth saw that the man loved them both equally and that he would wear himself out if they continued to call to him.

And so the Spirits of Earth and Sky left the man.

But as they left, the man awoke and saw them disappear together over the horizon.

The man ran to the horizon, leaping into the Sky and stretching back to the Earth.

He ran all day, but the Spirits of Earth and Sky were gone.

The man wept.

But then he realized the gift of running that the Spirits of Earth and Sky had given him.

And from that day on, whenever the man wanted to feel the love of the the Spirits of Earth and Sky, and whenever he wanted to show his love for the Spirits of Earth and Sky, he ran.

And that is how the Spirit of Running was born.

soft chop awaits, I know
because soft rain
has just moved through
the dark green valley
crossed my path
while I have battled headlights
and the occassional small hill

the remnant clouds obscure
the hesitant dawn
but I am at the lake
and will not wait

I strip as eager
as a lover
shiver as I return
from too long without her
and dive smoothly
into her arms

I remember suddenly
how playful and warm
it is to swim
enveloped in her
late summer embrace
regardless of the rain
the rain was nothing
to the lake

I was right about the chop
but being right about
a certainty is moot

my ride to get here
took my breath
and made my heart beat faster
fueled my thirst

I turn my head
on an even stroke
and instead of breath
I steal a drink
like a secret kiss

she gives it with
a playful splash

she has a trillion more