The Lame God

Joseph Dreams Two Dreams

[52] JOSePh DreAMS t WO DreAMS Always in the distance, burnt brown combines sweeping up spools of wheat. My sons sleep in the back seat — the younger one bowed over; the other up straight like a sun-drenched sheaf. Up ahead, one sheer pool after another that the heat lays down. Day stars (the older one calls them) spring up from the pools and usher us on, then flicker and steam. A Dakota we’ve never seen. the steady re-inscribing of a field of rows; the shearing of their braided tips in order to bring something good to wheat and goldenrod. A simple plan like a coat of colors meant to unravel thread by thread — and threshing it, figures so small i can hardly interpret them. Are they brothers? Father and son? Brothers, since elders give up the wheel more easily than this. And look how the bigger one stands, then suddenly disappears like the grain he’s reeling in. i reach back to wake the older one: solicitude, or a favoritism that i had thought might pass. Or a reckoning of our lives that comes when the light slants like this, as if we are looking through more than window glass. i pat his leg to comfort, or to bless him, or to brush some divination off. But he is already looking out — and oddly — [53] seems to know what i can’t bear to ask myself or this Dakota God. Consider what each soil will bear and what each refuses. —Virgil, Eclogue VII ...