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21 Robert Hill Long
Song of the West
In camp she was drinking a wine from Languedoc. The checked oilcloth reddened with sunset calming the north Pacific a few steps west and she was content to celebrate another equinox
she ought to place a personal ad ( oenophile desired) or adopt a greyhound. It was then she heard oc oc oc in redwoods overhead: raven’s goodbye to the sun hissing in the cold blue well
here, the mosquitoes killed by predictable weather like her dog-month frets about premature white hair, joint pain, living out the long coastal nights debating whether
to the west. Langue d’oc, she sang, tongue of the west, and drank its blood, and let night cup her breast.
Janet Levin
The Only Thing I Know Now for Dennis Phone in hand, hot sun on the deck, I imagine with him, through his eyes, through the years, the ‘50s landscape he remembers now through cloudy eyes, same time of year as now but no time then to sit in unseasonable heat and, least of all, tan. He’s nearly ninety now, changes tires by touch, switches out the tractor’s mower, installs the snowplow with not enough sight but plenty of tactile memory imbedded in fifty-plus homesteader years. The independent living lady came today, he says, and my heart skips, wondering if his wife has lost more ground. Or maybe it’s him. There’s this newfangled product could help him check the dipstick, something about projecting an image on a screen big enough so he can see when to crack open a quart. She thinks she has one in the office. It means one more thing he can still do, still another normal task on the table.
There are spaces in our conversation, not awkward but his answers tell me he’s not hearing my questions, nor is he responding to my comments. It’s just me here, listening. But I don’t think I can plow this year, he says, my legs just won’t hold up. I hold the phone against my heart, close my eyes, lift the receiver, and tell him the only thing I know now, to me, the only thing that matters. I tell him—this Wyoming man whose parents leased land to grow crops when there was no money, no work this man who cowboyed until he flew fighter planes in the South Pacific, experimented on the Kenai with cattle, and wired it after the road was built. I tell him I love him.
Janet Levin