Red,
And all of it’s to say our hopes for you are as deep waters. Our love like a stone dropped into life’s green brook for you, and on this mountain it’s easy to remember. How your loving greens deepened. How our green eyes opened to fire like flowers in the morning, and suddenly we’re feeling boyish again.
Like strong, Red. Like saying things before thinking sometimes in our breezy freedom, even, and these morning visions of you are like great green trees, falling.
We know. We know, Red, we know. We’ve been tasked with keeping our weird lidded. To aim straight and act like we can see. We try to repeat it to remember, and not just for you anymore.
No, we keep this mask blue for you, Red. We tie it up tight.
Little white flowers drift through the orchard. Little white flower like Montana stars, falling, and our sister sings out from across this green, sloping distance. She sings a medley of the classics, man, like how in just one week we’ll be under the same blue star, dancing, living hand in hand as one again alongside our brother on the mountain.
She’s sculpted two hands to hang outside her barn, Red, big ones. And those open doors are her stage again. Her reminder how it’s all performance, all of it. How anything still together probably isn’t, but just an act, or how none of it really matters anyway.
Or, how all of what’s beneath the surface is just red clay for our sculpting.
Still, Red. Still blue in the morning when we wake too late. Like today, how it rained through dawn on the bible Dolly bought us. All those things the Dude said printed in red ink. Poems like,
Ye! To sit on my right hand, and on my left hand is not mine to give.
Or, Weep not.
It rains gentle at least, and other than this longing (which will reach out beyond us like a great, grieving hand for you forever, Red) we’ve been riding under ideal conditions. We continue the search for the revolutionary roots. Revolutionary seeds to plant in the community garden. We pass by country cathedrals rising, drink true, cold beers after long day’s of working.
Society, reads our sister’s signs, it’s just a stage, and these hips will sway on all night in private. Cowardly, sure, whatever. Since our grandfather’s pyramid closed we’re to build our own. And this takes time, man. A lot of it. Like it was to Texas and back in our black wagon. Like it was three weeks of labor with our Uncle.
The dude has white knuckles and he taught us how. Gave us a big, yellow book of poems before our leaving, and now we have a wagon full of his direction. A trunk full of notes on wood and shape, and tools, and so many new stories about our mother.
Today’s our mother’s birthday, Red. Christ, we miss her.
And now by Dolly’s bible our cowhide gloves are browning. Rain dries on white flowers which brown too in this heat, and the Dude says something about how a horse passed through the eye of a needle.
Makes us ache bad for Dolly’s wisdom, for our long nights of candle wax, our drunken waxing.
Bellesed are they which do hunger, the Dude says, and certainly, we believe him.
Rodin used clasped hands as his symbol for you, Red. And the roped and ringed fingers of our sister’s hands are spread wide, and blue, and soon we fear we’ll just be another one of her graceless blue figures, falling.
But no, no we won’t. Hell no, man, we can’t be. That’s the new vow:
No more falling.
Remember early on, Red, what we said about the pressure? We feel it some nights again. The pressure behind our eyes is mounting.
It’s all this weird we’re forced to keep inside us lidded.
On the winding road to our brother’s house we tip our sunhat to the new prospector. We don’t say a word, man, like just keep on riding. Pretending we can see.
We’ll get better at it, Red, that’s our vow to you.
But know we won’t stop searching. That’s the real vow. We’ll do our best to keep the swirling weird inside us lidded,
but we’ll never stop searching.
Dyl
PS — This morning we read how in Greek the word for actor is hypocrite. Means to deceive from beneath, Red. Means from beneath the ancient actor’s mask, deceiving. And there are people out there, Red, who can see futures in red candles burning. Did you know that? We’re one of them, man. Ceromancy, we call it. Dolly calls it manifesting. It’s what we did together, all summer long, at the table.
It’s over now, but that’s alright.