At the edge of town, there are no sidewalks and the eccentric houses are connected by a narrow dirt track that knows well the path decided beneath the cottonwoods. There are dogs in the yards with voices high and low, friendly and threatening (at times, simultaneously). They come out of their dog houses, the pads on their paws cold on the fresh snow, their breath boiling out of their mouths like steam from a kettle. Ignored, they drag the chains behind them and retreat back inside.
The kitchens call the residents out of their rooms and down to yolk-painted breakfast nooks that look out over fields of starched linen: the red wheelbarrow overflowing with the drifting gems, the ponies with their shambled furs, the baby blue pick-up remembering the fifties on a radio that hasn't sparked in years. The truck is parked (for the winter) in a bank of plowed meringue.
While inside there is coffee, bacon, and the babies soiled diaper. The smells--collectively--are the perfume of promise and possibility, the coming day, the baby's life ahead of her. Her parents imagine the tens of thousands of tomorrows. But outside, in your black tire boots, the sense of smell is the first to go. Your breath condenses on the Nordic knit of your scarf. No one knows these flags and so, the motif of scarf, of mittens, and of ski mask evades them. And they think you are a super hero, must be, come to the playground from afar, from across the desert.
It is dark still. The little town is inching toward the solstice. The Christmas concert is Friday. The fourth grade girls have descended on the monkey bars like crows, and they are singing, stomping their feet. This is a raucous version of Do you hear what I hear? Standing atop a mountain of snow zealously shoveled by early-morning nuns--penguins almost giggling in the December darkness--you already know the answer to the plaintive lyric. You do not hear what others hear, nor do they see what you see.
"We live as we dream alone."
You see the eastern horizon begin to bleed. The color spilling over the jumble of the Crazy Mountains, igniting the Milk River on fire, and striking the frosted metal of the play equipment like a bell made of light. The bundled children cast long shadows. The nuns in their ear muffs tower over the scene. The bell rings and we line up like cattle, rosy cheeks and the blue ice of your eyes.
The light has come, as if conveyed on wings of angels, bestowed upon us by the sky. Thus another day, draped in the temporal blue of winter light, finds its way down the valley, through the main street and over the high brick walls of the convent. As if it had been searching for you, the sun illuminates the hope in your gaze.
I remember you with the snot bubbling out of your nostrils in your bright blue snowsuit. I want to take off the horned-rim nerd that sits on my nose. I want to take my glasses off and look through the sapphire prisms of your Prussian garden... Everything that is anticipated is still tucked in under the quilt and the gun. In time for vespers, the stained glass explodes with daylight and the fourth grade girls start singing...
again...
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