An older guy who used to do bit parts in the movies showed up while I was reading a pulp novel in my Adirondack chair.
He said he needed a place to land his plane so could he build an air strip on the back part of the double lot?
Sure. Why the hell not?
He pays me six dollars a day in rent, cash money.
My dogs watch the work unfold,
or play with the guy's Boxer.
There is just him, his wife, his adult son, the Boxer (whose name is"Buddy"), and an old truck.
Work progresses slowly.
I collect my six bucks at 5 o'clock.
One afternoon about a week in, the guy stops by my chair, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.
"I'm up in the air in my prop job, and I'm almost out of fuel," he tells me.
"But...you're here," I point out as gently as I can.
"Yes," he agrees, "I'm here, but I'm also up in the air in my prop job and really need a place to land."
The dogs play.
His wife and son lean on their shovels.
Inside, I have a refrigerator, a table and chairs, a tv.
I think I've seen the guy in something.
Right now, though, he's up in the air in his prop job,
looking down at himself building an air strip in my back yard.
"Good luck," I say, the way one does.
He nods, sweating and looking beat, then goes back to building his air strip.
I watch the dogs chase each other and try to think what can I buy with six bucks?
_________
for day 9 of my 39 poems in 39 days.
There's a sense of peril, of futility in this, of complexity and bafflement that fits in somehow with the mood that's floating in the ether. We're all up in the air, looking for a safe place to land, perhaps? Like a message in a bottle, these feelings float in our subconscious til they wash up in our dreams. Fascinating and powerful, Shay.
ReplyDeleteWonderfully surreal, just at the edge of straight narrative, but off-kilter enough to pull us into the air with twin engines and sheet aluminum on our wings, yes still plotzed in our deck chair counting the six dollars over and over. A five and a one? Six ones? Does he pay in quarters and you fill a jar, or thumb them all in the coke machine, old school?
ReplyDeleteI love this as an illustration of life --- how we are constantly trying to create the thing/place we most desperately need, now and/or in the foreseeable future, sometimes falling short on time. Very gripping story.
ReplyDeleteThis is us, up in the air, almost out of gas at the beginning of a long journey, the instinct to move forward, with no where to fly. Brilliant.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a throw-back piece. And to top it off, a version of "American Tune" that hit the spot.
ReplyDeleteI loved Paul Simon's rendition of American Tune... but it made me cry as pretty much everything does these days. Your poems too.
ReplyDelete