Sunday, March 29, 2015

The Attic Bedroom


We lived in Grandpa’s house, in the bedroom attic, my brother and I back in the late fifties and throughout half the sixties.
The floorboards squeaked like mice, and the walls were cardboard paper thin.
The summers were hot, and the winters cold and reserved.
And the branches from the huge oak tree in front of the house, beat against the bedroom window.
There were times I pulled the sheets over my head, from the roaring and riding wind that swept over the porch roof, above where our bedroom window stood.
And I tried to be as quiet day to night, as quite as I could be, at ten and fourteen, and so on; and rest assure, if I wasn’t grandpa’s tongue was as powerful as horse hooves, so loud I thought it would set the bedroom clothes on fire.

In the middle of the night, I’d wake from a dream—I had whips, and lassos like the Lone Ranger, and Zorro!
I was, more often than not, the hero of runaway coaches on mountain passes, --
On a white horse in a windy gallop
Past cactus fields, I’d yell: “Gee-up!”  
Then when I had to stop quickly, “Whoa!”
Then I trotted some.
And then I woke up, usually not getting to finish the dream, unfortunately.


No: 4739/3-28-2015