Redcloud, Nebraska,
dream letter from grandma peter,
& i am out on my outing

Redcloud, Nebraska

Today my grandfather is up and talkative
and walking on his own old
heronlike feet. He asks for a cookie and plays
gin rummy with grandma. He seems to recognize
his gathered grandkids, son, daughter-in-law.
For once, visitors
are not hitmen, dead friends, or foreign moles.
Delusions of a kinder kind
today: I was Sitting Bull’s right
hand man! he claims. He was also
the King of England. We all remember
our dementia training — acknowledge
and redirect. Smile
and express understanding. Never
contradict. My grandfather
emits a perfectly legible flurry of mumbled dreams
til eventually he wears himself out
lays his forehead on the table. This is when when we hush
turn to our books and crosswords. My thumb
makes a wake of fur in the sleeping dog’s forehead
while I try to remember where my grandfather was born.

‍ ‍ Red clouds blooming now
across dreaming sky-of-mind.
Pup stirs, sensing rain.

dream letter from grandma peter

let me show you how to make ink
by driving agave spines into the rivers
of your hands, the dammed-up bends
and curves where grief has pooled. let me show you
how to wade upstream
in the pinkwater
of yourself, all the way
to waterfalls you wear
across your heart
like curtains.

recuerda: every drop of water
is merely borrowed, mijo.
cada gota debe regresar
al cielo.

now, press the point
to the water, cariño
and write me into
rivermemory, that stream
spilling lightninglike
across the sky.

let me show you
one more time:
this is how
you reverse rain. this
is how you let
your angels fly.

i am out and about on my outing

if you must know, i go
to Hades. holy
Hades. yo soy

Coyote. some see me
as Charon’s opposite (i shuttle up
he shuttles down, i guess) but i disown
the old up-downness of the world.

i can repress anything.

i named my only remaining eyeball
tragaluz.

as far as the authorities know
i have not seen dead people.

if moths were lured to
silence they would hive
on my neon tongue.

not that i must explain myself

but i am lately less
and less canine, more
early amphibian
finding light
an acquired taste.