Your boat, Jane said, has a hole in its side so big it was like a door for us to walk in.
There’s a hole in the sky, I’m sure you have seen it, it’s a hole that is called the moon.
When she said what she said, Girl looked, with her head, at the blue where the moon, in the blue of the day’s sky, it was the ghost of a fish, it was full and like a fish eye it looked down on her. A hole, Girl laughed, a soft sort of laugh, in the side of a boat, it won’t sink that boat, not as long as the moon in the sky won’t let it.
What do we do now?
Like this they waited.
Like this they did do.
This then they did.
They watched.
The sky that was blue turned black.
The moon in the sky moved from one side to the next.
When the sun took its place the moon did not say a word.
When the sun rose so did the lake.
It was, the lake, the ghost of a dead man.
It rose from its dirt grave.
Like this the lake lived.
The lake took the place of the dirt and of the grass and the trees. It took its lake shape as it found its new place in this place that it used to be. It did not take no from the dirt when the dirt said to it, No, you can’t, or when the trees tried to tell it, You don’t live here, we do.
The moon, though no one here could see it, they all knew it was there, that it hid like a fish in the new day blue of the lake that rose up to meet and eat the sky.
At night they watched it, the moon, lift up in and be with the lake. Like a stone. Or a fish. It sang its new moon song. The stars did not move or dance, or at least not all at once.
One by one, the stars, all but one, burned out.
The one that was left, it did not fall. It stayed where it was.
It fell in love with what was left.
THE DARK AND THE NOT DARK
~ ~ ~
It starts in the dark and ends in the not dark. In the dark, when it starts, the sky is black. Though the sky is black, the stars stick out from the dark as if they too are a part of and come from the not dark. In the not dark, the stars take leave with the dark. The sun in the not dark lifts up out of the dark and shines its not dark light on all that it sees and all that sees it shine. The sky, in the not dark, is blue. There is no word to say what I see when I say those words, The sky, in the not dark, is blue. This blue that I say that I see in the sky, it is not just blue, it is not just light blue, it is not just what is by some called sky blue. There has got to be a word out there in the world to say what the sky is when I say that it is blue, but if there is such word, out where in the world, I don’t know where, I don’t know of it, this word, or where it could be. What is, in the not dark, it is not what it is in the dark. In the not dark, the not dark makes what takes place in the dark and makes it not seem to be what it was, or what it is, once the not dark comes to take its place. This is what takes place in the not dark when no one else is there to see what it is. In the dark, I want you to see, there is the man and there is the not man. The not man sleeps in her bed where the man is not in it and when the not man is not there to be a man in that bed. Where the man is when he is not in this bed is he is in some man place where men like to be. Such a place as this is the place where the man likes to go to drink the drinks he likes to drink. Most nights it is beer that the man likes to drink when he goes off to a place such as this, but some nights he comes home with a smell of what the not man knows is a thing called gin that is the smell of his breath. When the man comes home with the smell of beer and of smoke and of gin on his breath, the not man knows not to wake up. She’ll lie in the dark with her eyes shut to the dark and hope that the man will go, will get, will go back out. Out where? The not man does not care where. Back to that man place for all the not man could care. Or just out in the dark where the air is cold and the smell of his man breath can be breathed out in the dark and be smelled by just the moon and the stars and a sky that, when the moon and stars are not to be seen up in it, it is hard on nights like these to see it: to see where the dark ends and where the sky starts and it’s hard to tell, in the dark, which is which. The not man knows this: that the man’s bad breath can touch the dark but that it will not reach the sky. She is sure of this. She is as sure of this as she is sure that the sun at dawn means that there is where the east is. East is where the sky’s first not dark takes the place of the dark. East too is where the sky’s first dark takes the place of the not dark. The not man’s eyes take note of this on those days when the man is gone and these are the days when the not man has time to stop and look and watch the world go by and the world that is dark and the world that is not dark takes both its dark and its not dark shape. The trees in the dark are not the same trees that they are in the not dark. In the not dark the trees get in the way of the sky’s sky blue. In the dark the trees are a part of the sky that is there in and is what it is in the dark. And then there are those days when the man is not gone and the man in there in the house with the not man and in with the dark that ends when the not dark starts seems not to leave from its place. The man in the not dark is dark. The man that is in the dark is the same as the man that is there in the not dark. In the not dark the not man can see more than just the shape of the face of the man who is there in the not dark. In the not dark the man has eyes that are small and a nose that is long and thin and a mouth with lips that are pulled tight to make like the line of a scar. In the dark this scar is used by the man as a kind of a knife to cut through to the place where the not man’s skin, it is a hole through which words are fed in through to. In this dark the not man eats of these man sounds that come to her through the dark and she takes them in her and makes them to be a ball of string for her to knit with. In the not dark the not man wakes to a sky that is blue and sits in a chair that is faced out to face the trees that are there in the not dark. Like this she sits and moves her fists and rocks back and forth till in her hands the strings in her hands are made to be a rope. This rope, this not man, she takes this rope and in the room where the man is in that place where he has gone to sleep, the not man takes this rope and twists it and ties it so that it is a rope that is a loop round this man’s neck. She waits like this in the not dark of this room for the man and his man eyes to wake up. When his eyes look to see what is to be seen here in this room of the not dark, the not man will pull back tight with her not man hands till the rope goes tight and till the man’s man face turns as blue as the not dark’s sky.
I. DEAD DOG SLEEPS
Dead Dog is not dead.
Dead Dog just makes like he is dead.
Don’t let this dog fool you like he once fooled the both of us.
Look here.
Dead Dog sleeps.
Dead Dog sleeps by the side of the road.
Dead Dog could sleep on the road, or in the road, if on the road was where Dead Dog would want to sleep the sleep of sleep.
It has been days since we saw this road we walk down with a car that drove down on it.