Mother Mary Comes to Me

The clock says 3:45 in an electric color that once surrounded the clock, pushed a quarter hour ahead to ease last-call pressures, that lit the corner of the pub where my father would hold court in the evenings. Water leaks from the dark new spring sky and the dog, terrorized by thunder when the front rolled through, has finally fallen into a deep sleep.

The only dream of a night that has now included just a single hour of sleep has terrified without any of the ghosts of my past intervening. Is it progress to move beyond repetitive re-livings of historical losses? This dream was pure fear, ancient, eternal human fear. A dream a man could have had four million years ago. Perhaps I need to start at the beginning to truly move forward.

Television offers cold comfort in this strange hour. Should Americans use only English? Superman as an adolescent. News from here. News from there. News in a language I probably should, but cannot, comprehend. Game shows, vampires, murders down under. I stare - clicking the remote – cycling without purpose.

When I was young and it would rain in the night I would drift to the attic spaces, the storm covering the sounds of my movements, and I would lie on a scratchy old blanket in a place so dark I could not see my own hands, letting the rhythms push me into sleep and dreams of travel, escape, ocean voyages, and treks across an empty North American wilderness. Usually I would travel alone. But sometimes I might be accompanied by my own visions of the saints we prayed to: St. Jerome offering me a ride on his Triumph motorcycle, St. Francis cooking in the ships galley, pouring hot coffee spiked with whisky. Once, at age 12, Mother Mary herself - providing ham and eggs in a colorless café on the Alberta prairie.

___________________________________________________
copyright 2006 by Ira Socol

Comments

Mary Godwin said…
I have time and again resisted the prompt to remove your blog during those tidying-up episodes that come and go on my blogroll ... call it an act of hope that you would be back. And there you are. I am so glad to see you again. -mg
11:23 AM, April 14, 2006
Brenda Clews said…
It's good to have some of your brilliant writing posted again...
6:29 PM, April 14, 2006
~ Artist said…
how did I miss your come back? I check your blogs all the time, hoping, I'll see something new... and here it is.

Thank you... and I love what you have written here. I'm especially found of the first sentence in your last paragraph... I really love it. Thank you...
4:45 AM, May 05, 2006
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