The Egg Toss

Brewster, NY
Finally, far down Drewville Street I spot a place by the water in the woods. My pack is heavy with apples from a woman named Barbara I meet miles ago when the sun still had some life left in it. No sooner am I in the woods, and the tent is up, do I get drenched again in police lights. Someone in getting a ticket on the bridge I just crossed. It is Halloween. Everyone is dressed up like a cop.

The smell of Autumn is so thick that my mind can't get any air. I am pleasantly drunk. Leaves are swirling everywhere.

Mohopac
The radio in a coffee shop I take a break in is playing Van Morrison's Into The Mystic.

In a room in Norwichtown, CT she is close to me. We are dancingslowly as if in one body, and talking softly about this walk that has begunto get louder in me. I did not know that it would be sixteen years before I would hear this song again, and have my house on my back walking across America. She was married already, but we still made believe. She gave me promises that canceled themselves out with the last two words, if only. She would walk with me across America, if only. She would cloak me in her olive brown skin when all of the geese hurt our ears with news of winter if only.

She gave me a card heavy with her heart, and then went home to have children.

A few months ago I drove the hours to her old house on Canterbury Turnpike. New houses are everywhere on that street. I walked into her yard past the garden where the flag pole still reaches the sky. The house was vacant , and open. I walked in the doorway, and called out to the past. Sixteen years of silence came to me. The place was gutted. Workers had gone to lunch. In the window I saw us still dancing, and Van Morrison never sounded so rich.

Some good-byes never happen so that we can go back, at least in a song while strangers in coffee shops try to find our face from across the room.


Tonight I let the tent rest. I place my pad on the leaves, breaking up my out line with a log. An egg just miss me from a passing car window. I hit it with my walking stick before I think about eating it. Bummer.
A cricket beside me is lovesick. He plays his song as if he is the last voice in the world. From farther in the woods one weak chime responds in his tongue. Into the night they trade songs. I am happy for them, and thankful.
It is so good to lay beneath the stars again. Rt. 6 is a hundred yards away.