' Alamo Translation '
Years ago, when my world was still young and small, I would sit alone on a home made diving dock and watch meteor showers. They took place every year, a few days after my birthday, and it served as a sort of cosmic reconnection every year. I layed their while meteors flashed and reflected in the lake below burning the night with its white blue ink and leaving sun spots on my perfect retina. I came from that warm august water, where cold fronts above were blowing pines across the lake and down the narrow shoot of our channel before settling in the screens of my parents porch and stirring the curtains. The fresh cold, the crystalized pine, the wet moss that faded from burgundy to spring, everything blew thru those screens and surrounded the curls of my parents love. They built that house in '78 when my mom was pregnant with my sister. I remember the date was etch into the cement of our front steps, next to the old cast iron tree my dad welded there were slate stones on the walkway and railroad ties around the sandbox and wood piles scattered between birch trees. There where blueberry, patches, and other gardens, narrow trails through out the woods, and swamps that were impossible to explore. There were patterns of fallen trees that served as walls for our forts and other imaginations. There inside the house there were other treasures. The secret spot beneath the steps where we conspired with flashlights and hung posters with duct tape there was the crawl space with cold cement floors, shelves of antiques and roles of insulation laying around. My dad told me it would burn me if I touched it. There were burnt orange tiles in the foyer, the balcony of shined metal that overlooked it all, and mounted animals, like the ruffed grouse with golden eyes. The flying fish from Alaska, the caribou we called reindeer, and of course the big bear hide. Everything smelled like burnt wood from the basement, where my dad's work bench was littered with nails and screens too random to ever have been purchased my favorite place was below the steps where for many days with honey, my golden returner with a sould that matched. Someday, I'll return to those blazing meteor showers and sail across the warm august water, never to return to earth again. — A L B
:0)
Sincerely,
B N
w/ Coaltrain Bonus
