Absentee Indians and Other Poems

Those Things That Come to You at Night

120 Those Thinss That Come to You at NiSht "Old Woman, Grandmother,"she said. "They come to me at night." "JtVhat is it they want?" "Can't tell. Ain't like I really hear them clear." Like voices I've known sounding off over the hill behind the milk shed under the belly of a car coming through the woods familiar tones and rhythms like surface conversation heard while underwater the sliding pitch of sound but no clear word borders. "You must try to hear and remember. Sounds, pictures, the stories they bringyou, the songs." Swimming among the fluid notions of dream space where voices land in the hollow behind the house and echo back to sleeping souls where ideas ricochet off of each documented waking moment but strike home in the slumbering core. 'They tell me things 1'm sure. I want to get up toJollow. But I can't pull my body along. When I wake up I am homesickJor those voices. And then sometimes, maybe when I am hauling water orfrying bacon, I remember something, just aJeeling really." The old woman, bent over her basket, nods her head slowly. "Yes," she says. The younger one waits. Nothing more. Night speaking touching spirit without distinguishable words or voice calling by name calling your ancient being arousing that felt destiny waking all past folding the torn moments together and shaking them out whole. "Grandmother?" "It's that way; child. The night things. Like howyou learned to walk. Nobody can teach you." Now a rumbling comes heard over a heartbeat beating more rapidly with a fear of greatness felt in the bladder breathed with flared nostrils approaching like a flood it rushes upon you cleanses you with night desire leaves you floating peacefully into daylight. 121 122 'They get louder, 1'm told." "The voices?" "Ayah. Louder ifyou don't seem to hear. Louder still untilyou hear or go decif. Everybody has a choice you know. Some go night decif. Others learn to listen." Singing the songs of midnight going quiet, smiling shyly when someone hears listening inside voices rounding each corner of yourself forming you from dark light remembering those things that come to you at night. ...