My brother—a firefighter in real life—tries to organize us all, get us down into some echoing subterranean cavern that looks like the inside of a ship. Explosions rattle in my sternum, giant robots search the houses, wind flings fire this way and that. The end of everything.
And I feel—relief.
If I open my eyes after such a dream, I snuggle my face into my pillow the way my dog pushes her chin into her paws when she’s settling into sleep. I listen for the barred owls that live in our neighborhood sending their raucous “who-cooks-for-you” calls across the trees. I sigh, waiting for the next dream to open under me.
*
So, really, absence. No bills, bank accounts, overdraft fees, cell phones, emails, computers cars planes smokestacks overcrowded malls lines at the doctor’s office dmv receipts taxes broken lightbulbs alarms deadlines shouting politicians reality tv twitter scrolling billboards amplified distorted music…
*
It is five o’clock on a hot Friday afternoon and the road, the great sweeping four lanes rising across the city of Tampa from downtown to my eastern suburb, is a colorless page of concrete, completely devoid of its former mosaic of cars in red and gold and blue and silver. I am walking, or riding a horse. Marshlands stretch to my right, out to the bay. In the silence I can hear the waterbirds calling out to each other, claiming this or that stand of reeds for their own. To my left the Ikea building is just a frame with no walls, so I peer into a dozen carefully constructed living rooms and kitchens and offices. Ahead the road stretches, solid and empty, blessedly empty. I am by myself and safe. This is my road. This is my world.
*
Yes, I would keep some things. Fruit, for one. Strawberries and raspberries and blueberries, oranges and grapefruit, concord grapes and Bartlett pears. Stones balanced on stones. Questions. The ability to make meaning of the shapes of clouds.
*
This is my world, remember. There will be no movie scenes of chaos and mayhem, amoral tough guys in leather who make the world dangerous for everyone but them. Water will be sweet and plentiful. Nature will take over in its orderly way, the elegant seed-heads of wild grain rising through cracks in the parking lot, the bears and the panthers and all those myriads of frogs shrugging into their old spots with a sigh. No swarms of killer bees, no strangling vines quick as snakes, no monstrous giant lizards who frighten everything and cannot be escaped. There will be people to talk to on occasion, with only the wisest and gentlest of us reproducing. We will all live among the trees. We will walk for miles without getting tired, with a joy in the swinging movement of our hips and knees. We will spend years learning to sing back to the birds.
—
Katherine Riegel‘s first book of poetry is Castaway (FutureCycle Press, 2010). Her essays and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Cream City Review, Crazyhorse, Fourth Genre, Terrain.org and other magazines. She is the poetry editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection, and teaches at the University of South Florida. Her website is www.katherineriegel.com.
Photo by Annie Agnone