The Nap
He lays on his back on the cold, hard, blue linoleum floor after
the midday dinner of homegrown roast beef, potatoes, wilted
lettuce salad, hot coffee, coconut topped cake. His left arm
forms a right angle at the elbow as the back of his wrist rests
on his forehead, touching the slight curliness of his not quite
black hair. His left leg stretched out straight, right one drawn
up, knee jutting out. The sleeves of his worn, pale blue dress
shirt rolled up; his overalls show signs of wear and washing.
Every day after dinner he naps in the same spot in this same
position for exactly fifteen minutes before returning to the field.
My father.
Seventeen years after his death, one day as I napped, slowly
driving off, astonishment stuck. There I lay exactly as my
father used to so many years ago, my left arm forming a right
angle, wrist on my forehead, left leg stretched out straight, right
one drawn up, knee jutting out. I remember not just in heart
and mind.
The body always knows.
Taken at the top of Mt. Evans in Colorado when I was a child.
The raven was standing on the little table in the wicked witch’s private room. Expecting a new kind of feast, he dipped his beak into a bowl of wiggly white worms. And spat them clear across the room. “Great Suffering Succotash!” he exclaimed. “What is this stuff?’
El Presidente was enlarging his war against his citizens. This meant the roads were more crowded than before with refugees fleeing the capital city for safety among the farmers on the plains and up in the hills. Some of these refugees arrived, of course, at the farm of the wicked witch.
