It has been forty years since I trod this ground. I look up and see trees I once knew, then down at the pine straw that my feet are scuffing into little piles, inhaling the scents of pine pitch and the musty humus. Through the branches, I see glimpses of the old house, a glorified cabin really, and slow my pace. It has been our family retreat since 1946, when my grandfather and his ‘boys,’ newly returned from the war—“God protected them,” my grandmother always said in her stern voice—built the house on a derelict colonial foundation deep in the woods of Northern Rhode Island. My father once told me that they cut and milled the wood themselves from pine trees on the property. I wonder if any of them wrote a message on one of the boards for posterity, or dropped a coin into a wall as it was closed. The property is rarely visited now; my family is scattered and too busy to make the trip.
As I approach the clearing around the house, I see the grassy spot where my grandmother used to plop me into a large galvanized tub filled with cool well water up to my belly button. This was my swimming hole on those sizzling, August days. I don’t have any memory of what I did in that tub. I wonder why and then realize that it was not a place to do, just a place to be: to feel the sun warm my white, fat toddler body.
I remember the grass around the house as emerald green, sweet and cottony soft on my tender soles, like the blankets in my crib. The lawn looks coarser and browner now, with little tufts of gray thatch poking through, and many medallions of weeds.
I pat the old cedar tree next to the tub spot. Its branches reached to the sky back then, cast a safe-harbor shadow onto the grass next to my tub that promised to protect me when the sun got high and strong. When my grandmother, the boss of the family, decided that it was time, my grandfather, the rock of the family, would ease my tub into that haven with me in it with his giant hands. I smile as I see myself giggling, and slapping the waves that were sloshing around me. The tree doesn’t look so tall now. It is tired and strained. More clumps of its greenery have brown in them than I remember, and its trunk seems grayer, its muscles less pronounced.
I wander over to the dug well that reaches down into the arteries of the earth. The ‘boys’ and my grandfather found it caved in, a relic of the last resident on this land. My father once proudly told me how he singlehandedly removed the boulders clogging it, and used them to rebuild the shaft to its original shape. I search in vain for the blueberry bush that grew next to the well, the one that made me feel like a pioneer when I gorged on its perfect fruit. I put my hand on the well cover, which I remember as an expansive, neat concrete disk, comforting in its strength and hardness amidst a forest I then saw as chaotic and mysterious. The cover now seems small and softer, mottled and pitted from the relentless attacks of weather and pollen, burdened with patches of moss and lichens.
I look at the pitcher pump sprouting out of the center of the well cover and notice a small patch of forest green paint surviving at its base. I remember how the first thing my grandfather would do in the Spring was to repaint the pump with that lush green paint, to hide the rust that had broken through during the winter, return it to its ‘proper’ condition. I see myself as a young boy, struggling to work the pump’s brawny handle that was almost as long as me, using all my weight to move it. I want to hear the squeals of the rusty parts rubbing against each other again, to command the stream again. I grab it and pull down with a heave, but it is rusted frozen.
My brow is now covered with beads of sweat. I pull a water bottle from my belt pouch and unscrew its plastic cap. The container feels out of place in my hand here, too shiny, too contrived. I take a swig of the water. It is flat and tasteless, no sign of the robust tangy, minerals of the well water I am imagining. I begin a slow walk toward the house.

I see the wire and I glide in and land like Fred Astaire. My mourning dove claws grasp onto the wire and I instinctively balance and face into the wind. We birds always face into the wind, ready to fly away at the slightest flick of strange noise or image, one that is not programed as ‘friendly.’ He lands next to me; he always follows me wherever I go. He is my mate, which means we are tied together for life. It also means that I can’t play with other mourning doves, the younger ones with the new plumage and the strong legs. My mate has given me seven clutches of hungry mouths since we decided to mate, a decision that I think I made when I saw his dance and puffed up chest, although in some deep place I think the decision was made for me. Each time he jumps onto me in the Spring, when everything is renewing itself, I want to say, “Stop. I want to just soar for a while. Eat bugs and berries without having to depend on you for what I eat.” When he brings back food to our chicks and me, I don’t get to choose what I get; sometimes it is a damaged berry and I think that he has eaten all the best ones, and I get angry. I adjust my feet and then jump into the sky, begin to flap my wings, and head to what I believe is a better vantage, one where I can watch the waves and think of what I might have become without him. He struts and jumps into the air right after me, driven by some chemical signal to stay near. I land in a soft clump of leaves on the roof of a house and he lands right behind me. Then, to my intense consternation, he waddles over in that signature mourning dove strut, and slides onto my back. He is heavy but I like it, the feeling of closeness, the dominance of him. He wiggles and I feel him enter me. I freeze—I don’t know why, but I must—and let him continue until he shudders and becomes quiet. It is then that I want him off, wish to be alone for a while. When I move, he falls off and I sidle to the left and become quiet and sluggish, sleepy. He doesn’t move and I wonder if he is dead. A sharp sound, probably one made by the two-legged groundlings or one of their contraptions, flushes us out of our dozing spot, and I bolt for cover at another spot. He is following me again.

I let go of the rusty chains and jump off the playground swing, yelling “Bombs over Tokyo!” and begin my flight. I draw the words out to fill the few seconds in the air perfectly.
My father sent me out to play. If he calls for me, I can hear him from here at the school playground, and I can’t get lost going home from here.
I don’t know where Tokyo is on a map, or even Japan, or any other country besides the United States. I just know that Tokyo is where my father said the enemies lived, the ones that he fought in the war. The word ‘Tokyo’ sounds exotic to me, like the name of a dark nation on another planet in another galaxy, a place certainly deserving of my bombing. My mouth feels good saying “Tokyo.” When I say it loud and drag out the ending, like Toe-key-oooooooo, I can feel my words echo off the brick walls of the school next door to the playground. This makes me feel that my bombs are powerful.
I see bombs exploding noiselessly on Tokyo in the black-and-white documentary newsreels I watch with my mother and father at the Gilbert Stuart Theater every Saturday morning. My father wants me to see them so I will know about war, but he doesn’t want to talk about what we see after it’s over. I sit spellbound as bombs send dirt, branches, and fragments of guns and trucks and buildings into the air. From seeing the fireworks on the Fourth of July, I know bombs make a noise that hurts my ears and shocks my insides when they explode.
It is all a game of tag—find the enemy and bomb them and win. I don’t know that the ‘enemy’ is comprised of dads and moms like mine, and kids like me. Or that bombs shred legs and heads and eyes, and leave blood and other gooey body parts on walls and in the dirt, and even on other people. I don’t know that bombs can kill or make some people live in so much pain that they wish they were dead.
I pull myself up onto the hard wooden seat of the cockpit for another bombing run, wiggling into position and clamping my hands onto the chains. I am happy being in the sun, without adults nearby, although they are within shouting distance if I need them.
I pump my legs to gain height, feeling like a bird that is about to take off on a long journey to Tokyo. I don’t know that my father had helped liberate a camp in Burma where he wished he could fly over the bodies he had to step on to rescue the almost dead. I heard my mother tell her sister about it on the phone. I don’t think he has ever spoken a word of it to anyone but my mother. When I heard my best friend’s dad ask him about it, my father said, “Another time,” and turned and walked away.
I approach the highest point of my swing, thinking I could touch the sun with just one more pump of my legs. I feel like a king about to create nightmares for my kingdom’s enemies. My father has nightmares. I hear him scream terribly some nights, like the sounds a wolf makes when being attacked by a bear on TV shows. I hear my mother trying to sooth him. I imagine her rubbing his head like she does to me when I skin a knee or squash my hand in a door. I don’t know about my mother’s fears of him killing himself and maybe all of us, too.
As I arc back to earth, I think about how proud my father would be if he saw me killing the enemy. I wish I could have fought next to him. This thought makes me put on my fighting face and yell as loud as I can.
I hit the dusty ground and make as loud an explosion sound as I can, like the nasally roar of Niagara Falls, and the enemy is vanquished. To demonstrate the force of the blast, I tumble across the dry dirt onto the playground’s brown crabgrass. But I am unhurt. As always, I am invincible.
I stand and dust off my flannel-lined jeans, the ones my mother bought three sizes too big so I could wear them for more than one year. Mom doesn’t mind scrubbing playground dirt; it’s oily stains she hates. I wonder why my father can’t get rid of what is haunting him by scrubbing his head in the shower. Maybe it’s an oily stain. His Army uniform hangs spotless and crisp in a bag in the basement. I once asked him if he would put it on so I could see what he looked like as a warrior. He got kind of quiet—I thought he was going to yell at me—and said, “Maybe when you’re older. Now go outside and play.”
I rush to the back of the line behind my playmates to make another flight on the swing, wishing I didn’t have to wait my turn to rain further destruction down on Tokyo. I don’t want to know that my father has just broken a sweat when he remembers seeing his best friend cut in half by a mortar round on an island near Japan. I like how my father is the head of our clan, the one my mother and I listen to for answers, the one who gets the first helping of the main course at dinner.
I hear my mother calling me to come home for lunch. I begin to run toward our prim Cape Cod house, across a field and a brook, through neighbors’ yards, dodging bombs and bullets, making explosion sounds as I swerve and dive, my arms outstretched. I imagine gliding into my home airfield, where my fellow airmen embrace me and pat me on the back. I am their hero.
I run into the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind me. I am unaware that it is good luck that has brought me to this moment, that I am one piece of bad luck away from losing my carefree life. I know that if something bad did happen, I would run into my parents’ arms and they would protect me. I don’t know that this won’t always be the case, that I might be in a real war some day and my cries for my father or mother will get drowned in the cloud of other screams around me.
I wrestle into my chrome and Naugahyde chair across from my parents and bow my head for grace. I peek at my father’s hands and admire how strong they look with their callouses and scars. I wonder what they have done to the enemy, if they still have the blood and scent of the enemy on them. My father catches me looking at him and I feel like a thief caught red-handed. My face breaks into a sheepish grin and he says, “What’s going on? What’s so funny?”
I feel trapped.
I look to my mother for help.
She glances at my father with a tired face, and says, “Let him alone. He’s just a boy.”

My memory of that day is darkness, a one-year-old at the doctor’s office. Was it because the lights were low, or because terror shrouded my eyes? The lightest part of the image, the visible part, is a doctor’s table that is plump and simple—chestnut brown leather, worn shiny in the middle. No other image intrudes; everything else is trapped within the darkness. I was not alone, I’m sure, but no one ever joins me in my memory. Who was holding my hand when the needle pierced the tender skin on my forehead, when the sutures pulled my cut closed? I can’t remember being on the table, the doctor, or the procedure. It’s as if I peered into the room but never entered. I rub my scar, hoping clear memories will pop up, like a genie from a lamp, but the entire image remains a burned snapshot. Yet, the memory of that darkness is still knife-edge sharp.

It is wartime in Disneyland,
“Where Dreams Come True”
“The Happiest Place on Earth.”

Slogans provide no cover
From the hissing bullets,
The acrid wisps of smoke.

The crack of the shot
Turns Pluto’s honey day
To rusted iron.

A phalanx of colored shards shreds his canine skull,
Spewing metallic confetti out
From the holes into the sky.

Azure ads for summer getaways pour from his mouth.
Breathing has no reason anymore,
Except to whistle, “Fly the Friendly Skies.”

The melody enchants
Children on the midway
Hunting for Mickey Mouse.

They cheer the fireworks display of Pluto in decline
And rub their faces in the paisley puddles
Around the rides.

Mickey pumps an extra shot
Into the head of Psycho the Weasel,
Minnie’s old beau.

Thick brown mud oozes
From Psycho’s final wounds,
Slimy, like spit-out Gummy Bears.

“Free Bird” wafts from “It’s a Small World,”
Heroin is mixed in the ice cream;
Every war needs tribute.

Pluto’s memories of gristle and steak sauce
Burrow between the grains of sand
Under his splayed paws.

There is a lull in the firing.
Reality can’t cope with the spinning color wheel.
The festive hues settle into one metal-gray stain.

The children’s memories—
The colors, jingles,
Cordite smells—
Become black
Silent
Eternal

The old phone booth stands next to a boarded up grocery store, once a bustling flower shop. I pull off the road and park on the broken asphalt, away from the screaming trucks that kick up dust and belch hot, acrid air in their wakes. I sit for a while looking at this cowering box bolted to the asphalt pavement. It is leaning away from the road as if trying to escape the fumes. Swirling graffiti laces its outside, which gives it a cheap festive look. The bottom panels are dull with grease; one is cracked in a starburst pattern around a bullet hole. The panes above are covered with scars from graceless encounters with callers. My legs twitch in anticipation of the short walk to the booth, but I am not ready. I need another quiet minute of fingering the change in my pocket before I turn off the ignition and get out of the car.
The bi-fold door sticks and grumbles at points. Once inside, I give my arm a contorted flick and the door returns to an almost-closed position. Did it ever fully close for me? The aluminum floor creaks. Its once gleaming surface is now almost hidden beneath a matted mush of litter and dirt. When I see this, my toes curl within my brown Oxfords. Although it’s noon, the overhead light is on, struggling to escape the bug-filled plastic dome that lit the dial for me on those late nights when I called you. I take a deep breath and think I catch a hint of the cedar and citrus of my old aftershave. I want to believe the scent is still here but know it’s only my imagination. I stare at the stainless steel counter where I used to arrange my quarters in a circle, feeding one to the extorting slot every twenty seconds to avoid the dreaded interruption of an operator whining, “Please deposit another twenty-five cents for an additional thirty seconds of call time.” I picture the quarters clinking down into the change case, triggering some other sounds in the machine that added time to the call. I remember our game: I would call at our pre-arranged time. You would pick up after three rings and remain silent. I would say, “Hello?” You would wait for several heartbeats and say, “Hello to you, too. What a wonderful surprise.”
A blot from someone’s drink reminds me of the many cool Budweisers I perched on that shelf, getting warm, forgotten while I was lost in your voice. They tasted so refreshing after we hung up, a reward for my hoarse voice. I think of the matchbooks from every club in town that others had opened on this shelf since then. I wonder whether the numbers that were written on them were last resorts or first chances. I see oily orange splotches on the lip of the shelf where cigarettes had been balanced, lighted ends almost over the edge. A desperate riot of right and wrong numbers is now scratched into the shelf’s glossy surface—a permanent record of anticipation.
I settle against the back wall and see my reflection in the chromed face of the coin vault. My hair is gray now and my skin appears sallow and wrinkled in the green light. My memory is fading but I still remember the number I dialed on those nights.
I poise a coin in the slot and release it after a moment’s pause. I insert another and the ring tone triggers a memory of your laugh. I poke the numbers with my index finger and the electronic tune soothes me. The sound of the other phone ringing raises the hairs on the back of my neck, and my hand tightens on the receiver. After three rings, someone picks up but I can’t hear a breath or any other sound. After a moment I say, “Hello, it’s me. Are you there?”
A familiar voice, but much younger, answers, “Is this who I think it is? My mother said you would call someday.”

Read the waves on top of a lemon meringue pie. What do they say? Enter a storm on the ocean—peaks spitting off their hats. Capture the spit in a bucket and read it. Slosh it around and read it again. What new parts of the story are revealed? Spit into the bucket. Watch as the wad is eaten by the ocean water. When the glob is dissolved, can you see the difference? What is new in the story? Come ashore. Empty the bucket onto the dune. Read the stain. Does it have a color other than dun? Is its shape a map of a homey place on a trough of the meringue, a reading room sheltered by the frozen spit of the peaks?

THE NEST

Rothole in the eave.
Suddenly, its formless russet frame,
Musty-looking, is filled with peeking eyes, mango beaks,
All flickering like an old movie.
It is snug in the hole, safe;
To leave is taking a chance.
As if he had a running start, a sleek, powder blue rocket shoots out, gone.
Another, another, leaving a quiet damp hole,
With secrets.

WORLD VIEW

Silicon squares intercept my world,
breaking the view into pieces,
keeping me away from love,
now just a type of movie, my chair in the projector room.
Even a speck of dust destroys reality,
defeats my attempt to forget the barrier.

I fall into days without pushback, hugging trees,
lichen dust on my hands,
sourdough and pitch odors stuck in me;
Green grasses and other stringy carriers of juicy sweetness
grind under my feet, leaving my boots stained,
slippery with yellowish-sticky blood;
reptilian briars grab at my clothes, begging for my flesh,
persistent in their clawing, conniving;
meadow flowers, unaccustomed to being viewed
by the likes of me,
return inquisitive looks through their sleepy lids,
wondering what lay in store for us when we collide,
in love or war;
pollen, unseen, sneaks into me, riding my inhales,
brushing past my defenses,
leaving fuzzy fingerprints on my mucous membranes.

All of this carnival
boiling around me, in me,
carrying me to outside of myself toward freedom,
denied.

The memories crush me under their ponderous hammering.
I roll to another view with hope
of connection with the unformed, untamed.

Where is that place now?

Hundreds take the tour every day, every five minutes around-the-clock, the restless line stretching out from the ticket kiosk for the streetcar named Desire. The long wait is eased with the yeasty scent of baguettes coming from the French bakery, especially soothing on a cold morning. But no one ever complains of the long stay in line. They use the time to think about how they could be changed by their visit. Some are not ready when they are at the entrance and step out of line. Those that take a deep breath and enter Desire find that time doesn’t tick or flow like when they were in line⎯it stops and curls around their hearts quietly, like a snake trying to get warm.

Everyone who purchases a ticket is required to have a retinal scan, and is never allowed to experience Desire again. Not even the owners, a pair of forty-something twins from Terrebonne Parish, have ever visited twice. Every week, you see a small article in The Times-Picayune, page seven or eight, about so-and-so who had to be dragged away from Desire, not being able to stand the thought of leaving the streetcar. While the urge to return is ever-present, everyone knows it’s for the best, yet . . .

I feel drops of sweat ride my skin from under my armpit down my side. I am now only twenty feet away from the curtain. The owners, or someone, decided many years ago that it was too distressing to those in line if they could glimpse the inside of Desire while in the presence of others. I am now only ten feet away. I wonder if I should be doing this, exposing myself to something so powerful yet unknown. My confidence corrodes with each step closer. I begin to flush, fidget, sweat. The ticket-taker has been watching me and is becoming nervous, tobacco juice dribbling out of the right corner of his mouth into a forest of greasy black stubble. I place my ticket into his white-gloved hand as a shiver passes through my gut. After a moment of hesitation, I step though the crimson satin drape.

As I edge inside, the first part of Desire I see is its rusted wheels stuck in cement. I look up and see a gray metal box. Is it gray? The quiet inside the shroud is stunning. A hint of a word echoes around my head, carried by the lazy air, but I can’t make it out; it is just out of reach. As I move my head, I notice that paint is peeling everywhere, but the effect is curiously inviting. Or is it dangerously seductive, like cracks in a wall hiding some treasure? The Gaudi-shaped windows are blinded with dust, or are they Desire’s eyes? Is it looking at me through them, thinking about what I am bringing: my hopes, my failures, my future? Is it worth the wait, the fifteen dollars? I know it is; no one has ever complained about the money or time after their visit. I put my right foot onto the first of four steps, worn, cracked oak—remnants of a now-sacred anonymous tree—set with tarnished brass carriage bolts, and look up to the platform in front of the door bordered with a filigreed rail, small scrolled D’s hanging in the center of each panel. Then my other foot follows onto the second step. By itself? When I arrive at the top, I pause, my anxiety washes away as I turn the ivory handle on the door and it clicks softly. I try to look through the glass as I push in, but only see my timid face staring back.

No one has ever spoken of what they see within Desire. At the end of the five minutes, the lights flicker, breaking the spell. There are always a few uninitiated souls waiting near the exit to examine the faces of the newly vested for answers. But while all the eyes look tired, everyone’s jaws are set, their lips are dry, and there is no clue of what has changed inside the new visitors. You’ll just have to go yourself, the veterans say. Even those shysters, whose sole purpose is to sell their story of their visit, never finish their plan. When confronted, they just shuffle their feet, look down, and give the stock answer, “I thought I could tell, but I can’t ruin it for others. I want to tell the world what happened to me in there, but I just can’t,” then turn away.

I can only say this: Desire has many seats and it is up to you where you light. Once you are settled, and a peaceful silence takes over, Desire whispers just one special word to you, just you, the most important word you’ll ever know, the word you heard in the wind when you entered. That word has guided me all my life.