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poet.
performer. activist. teacher.
WHAT I KNOW OF BRINDLE
It is the second Sunday in May.
My grandfather has been gone one week and a day.
I’m drinking bourbon out of an old French water glass.
Where I tore at my lip with my teeth last night the alcohol
feels like a burn, like a memory.
The air is full of Sketches, sampiquita, and a balsamic moon.
My skin smells of almond oil.
My fingers are heavy with the silver,
and the lobes of my ears are bare,
as are my shoulders, my arms, my neck.
I walked outside in the darkness, briefly,
until I felt the hitch of the air.
It sounded like something breathing,
maybe the trees, or maybe only the feel of you,
coming closer.
I could tell you about the dreaming;
how each night now I dream myself West,
in some wide High Plains grassland,
mountains gone purple and the orange burn
in the distance, right behind them.
I am standing alone, in that wind’s endlessness.
My braid has come undone, and so my hat
holds much of my hair in place.
I stand on that spot that I have driven days to get to,
in someone else's car,
with a brindle shade dog stretched on the back seat.
I know by the way she looks at me in the rearview,
how, for days, she watches me
sing and talk this folly out to myself and to her,
that she knows more than she is telling.
She knows far more than I do about what we are doing,
why we are headed West.
Within me, there is only a call of spirit, deep and dense, in my chest.
For days before leaving I imagine the people around me can feel it.
I imagine when my brother hugs me goodbye, yet again,
that he can feel its thud in my chest,
against my rib cage when the enormity of his arms holds me briefly,
only long enough to let me go again.
I imagine it is loud enough to be heard, like that wind,
like the coyote call on High Plains plateau,
and maybe just as haunting and just ever as strange.
I imagine other people in my vicinity can hear it, but I know:
I am the only one listening to it, the only one following its call.
Me and this kindred dog, chasing it, like the sun, West.
I wonder if you hear it, too.
I wonder if you wake at night, like I do,
at that darkest 4:00 a.m. hour and see my eyes,
as mutable as yours, as they were moments ago
in the dream in which we visited each other, again.
I wonder if you can feel me, moving toward you,
if my spirit is its own force that is
calling you out and conjuring you in.
Moments ago, outside in that breathing darkness,
I wanted to ask you how you feel.
Are you frightened?
Are you edged and awkward with the wanting?
Do you feel me?
I miss you.
I don’t even know your name, but I miss you.
You are as if a memory, yet unmet.
If I knew where you were, I would come to you.
I would stand before you, say to you:
Look. Look at the moon over the mountain.
I would take your hand.
Look.
At me.
Right here, in my eyes.
© 2004 Dora E. McQuaid
From The Way of The Heart, 2006 Dora E. McQuaid
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