Sad and Alone

Well, this is nothing new, nothing to rattle the rafters in the noggin, this moment of remembering and its kissing cousin the waking dream. I wonder if I'll remember it? I've had a vision of a woman reclining underneath a tree: she's about half naked and little by little I'm sprinkling her burial mounds with grass. This is the kind of work I like. It lets me remember, and so I do. I remember the time I laid my homemade banjo in the fire and let it burn. There was nothing else to burn and the house was cold; the cigar box curled inside the flames. But the burst of heat was over soon, and once the little roar was done, I could hear the raindrops plopping up the buckets and kettles, scattered out like little ponds around the room. It was night and I was a boy, alone and left to listen to that old music. I liked it. I've liked it ever since. I loved the helpless people I loved. That's what a little boy will do, but a grown man will turn it all to sadness and let it soak his heart until he wrings it out and dreams about another kind of love, some afternoon beneath a tree. Burial mounds—that's hilarious.