Little Dream of the Dusty Attic

Dusty heat, stale air rising out of old lumber, constant eerie twilightwallowing like toxic fog through the vents. . . .                                             Strange to climbinto the underworld, to hang on the edge of a trap door,letting eyes adjust.

But this is the dream of first things, of boyhood.Of old stories, of climbingthrough a cluttered closet into the attic of a lost house.

A stroller with rusted spokes, a beach ball, deflated,crushed hatbox, a woman's boot,                              but sure enough, piled farther back,those books I keep coming back for and can never quite reach,four or five picture books, water-logged, faded.

I stretch out a heavy arm . . .

then that familiar wave of loss, of stale air rising, attic blurringand rocking, and the books sliding farther away . . .

How odd, though, and sweet the payback,

the way they blend with rafters and twilight into one felt story—one dim beginning, one dark ending—                         the sour mouthof the whale, the vaporous cave, the splintered ribsof that stifling wooden horse.