“Alias Anything You Please” *

Guitar background on horseback
Hey that’s….you know….
That guy.
The singer. And there’s…
The other one. Wearing leather and boots.
And hats. In the desert.
What did they just say?
Why are they just randomly shooting guns
(and why are the commercials on TV so bad)?
That guy… he’s the comic relief. The clown.
The trickster. My favorite. He’s the one the movie is about. Not anyone in the title. Where’s….you know, what’s her name? Weren’t they together?

I have conversations like this.
Whether there’s someone to talk to or not.
Usually the dogs listen.
The cats too, though they live a very different language. I hope someone will talk to them all when I’m not around.

I saw a sidewinder in the dunes once as a kid. I’m recalling one of us threw a shoe to encourage it to sun somewhere other than the little used path we were walking, and it rattled away in a perfect string of esses.

Another time, I swam with a black snake in a deep ivy cove. Neither of us minded…I was too big to eat, and not swimming nearly as efficiently. A loud tourist to their usual spot. They knew who lived there. It climbed a bluff vertically to get out of the water. Amazed, I watched it loop up scrub and roots, as I tried to tread water. I think I had jumped in from that hill, or had at least wanted to.

I walked on a rusty nail in those same woods another year, bleeding into the dark rich earth of the forest floor. I had wanted to climb an old tree. Instead, we drove back roads looking for a tetanus shot. As we passed a herd of them, I begged for a pony sized wooden horse made out of tree trunks, already with a taste for the saddle. I was in love with the girl I had been walking with. Those woods were her back yard….as far as you could see…unfenced and bordered further by protected woodlands and water. She warned me not to pull the horse’s braided rope tail as she had on hers. I still wonder her whereabouts.

Later yet I heard those woods were a privately owned campground, occasionally rented out for ritual. Or at least nearby. I hope drums were beaten and words wisely sung or spoken aloud there. I hope there was dancing in firelight, tuned with the moon. My blood was on that earth.

*credit Bob Dylan