Now we meet a man whose mind is in need of quieting, whose heart is in need of comfort. From a hill, he looks down to where the freeway disappears in a curve among trees, and on the lights of his sleeping town. This is where he comes to meet such needs. There is half a moon, the thready inhalations of traffic, and airplanes blinking over the hills to the north.

He worries so much about nothing. The bills are paid, his health is good enough, no one means him any harm. Still he stands, searching the scene for meaning, hands in his pockets. His problem is simply that consciousness is; that the more aware you are, the more it confronts you. So he’s decided to stand here remembering. His way of fighting back.

He remembers things his father found, brought home and gave to him. A small stone, blacker than night and polished. A stalk of iceplant struck by lightning, turned to glass. A silver ring with naval coat-of-arms. A black puppy with white paws, who ran and played and slept; whose chin turned gray in his hands, who died in the yard one summer. Of all these, just the stone not gone to God. It rests in his pocket where he touches it, looking down at the lights.

His mother said the dog was free, relieved of old age, untroubled by the haunted wind that trembled through the hedge, and the cats that mewed to taunt him from the fence. His mother’s elegies were always pure and kind.

He remembers a river, green and brown by turns, which rose up to speak in April, laid down in August to whisper into fall. How he watched and wanted to join it, to sail away, to turn at its bends under the trees and feel the sun on its back. But when he finally did, it only brought him home.

He remembers women, the softness and clean smell of them, their racks and drawers full of clothing, their lights and laughter, the alcohol, the long car rides in terrible silence. He remembers this and coughs, and wishes he had a warmer coat. The moon is rising, the evening train has come and gone, and he can only smell the sea. Salt and stranded kelp.

There was a bicycle painted with rainbows and a long red seat, and what became of that? He was eleven then, and should have taken care of things. He doesn’t know. But if he had it now, he could fly down from here and through the town, stopping for nothing, needing nothing from the stores, indifferent to windows lit or set in darkness, immune to the clawing traffic. He could be free, more free than the dog they buried in the yard where it slept, more free than the freeway or the moon.


© 2005 by J. Kyle Kimberlin
all rights reserved