- Dr. Tea's Dreams -
* * * * *
A New Year’s Toast
I am dancing in the arms of a woman among friends with drinks at the bar. A jazz band is playing as we all make a toast to the new year. The woman has long jet black wirey hair. She is slender with a dark complexion and petite. We kiss into the early morning hours and then she decides to leave. The bar is empty and it is getting light outside. I start walking home thinking about the woman I was dancing with. She has been dead for ten years.
I am talking to another woman long distance on the phone. The wind is blowing violently and the rain pounds the roof. We talk about the same places we’ve both been before we knew each other. She tells me she is getting ready to toast to the new year and her friends are waiting for her and she has to go. I tell her I am tired and staying home instead of going out to party somewhere. We speak of the long dark days and the sun we haven’t seen in weeks. She tells me she is flying to Costa Rica in two days, wishes me a Happy New Year and says goodbye. I wake up looking at her lying there still sleeping soundly. The waves come crashing in against the beach and the tropical sun begins to rise.
I am driving across town to a New Years party. The streets are flooded so I get out of the car and begin wading across the road. I arrive at the house where the party is supposed to be. When I open the door there are pools of water rising halfway to the wooden staircase. Wine glasses float on the surface of the pools and people are talking and I hear a sad weeping cello playing in the basement. A tall man in a black coat and a long white gotee emerges from the pool of water and introduces himself. “ Hi I’m Jacob. This is my party. Who the hell are you?” Before I can introduce myself he dissappears. The cello stops playing. The walls turn to stone. I am at the bottom of a desert canyon somewhere. A flock of turkey vultures gather.
I am somewhere on a country road , not another car in sight only open stretches of high prarie and wild horses running free. I look up at the blue sky with scattered white thin drifting clouds. The car leaves the road and I am flying through the clouds looking down at the small towns in the valley. I can see people now as I descend. As I get closer to the ground I recognize the woman I was dancing with. She says, “ Hi I’m glad you could make it.” There is a bonfire and men, women and children are dancing and singing. Drums beat and I recognize songs of the Lakota . I must be in the Dakotas and it starts to snow and the wind howls through the night. We sit inside a tepee in a circle around the fire passing the peace pipe. We pray
to the Great Spirit to welcome in the New Year. The woman has long braided thick black hair like rope and wears a colorful printed shawl. She introduces her husband and tells me he’s a Nez Pierce. The children are sleeping and I tell her and her husband I must be on my way.
* * * * *
On The Bridge
I’m on a farm and it’s like an old family reunion up in Minnesota and I see some of my cousins. The one that appears vividly is my cousin Bill but he looks much younger than I had remembered him. He is slim with longer hair and has a mustache. He reaches out his hand and says, “ Hello, how have you been. It’s been a long time hasn’t it?” Most of the other relatives don’t recognize me but look at me suspiciously. No one else talks to me so I decide to leave. On my way out I notice all the deep ruts in the driveway from the hard rains. Much of the lower land is under water but now it’s winter and the fields are frozen over. I look down towards the barn at the huge ice pond where my cousin Jean’s son drowned a few years ago.
I’m crossing a bridge and the ice is melting and the river is rising over its banks and up to the steel beams of the old bridge but I keep going. Then I stop the car about halfway on the bridge deciding I cannot go any further. I see two men on the bridge. I get out of the car and walk towards them. They appear younger than me but look beaten and haggered. One of them leans down to the other one lying down on the bridge with the water rising everywhere and says, “Jesus Larry, this is heaven.
It’s so peaceful here with the sound of the water and no one hasslin you tellin ya
ya got to move on, no bright lights shinnin in yer eyes, no cops, no city jails."
“ Yeah I know,” says the other one hanging onto the railing, “just the sounds of the water rushin in your ears.” Then they notice me standing there and the one on the railing says, “ Hi, how you doin mister?”
“ Hey we got to get off this bridge or we’ll be goners!” I shout at them. “ Hey Joe, the one lying down says laughing, “ The man says we’ll be goners.”
“ We’re already gone,man. We’ve been gone a long time without a home or a
place to rest our heads. Hell, this is heaven to us,” the one on the railing says.
I walk back towards the car but the water is rising so fast now that the other end of the bridge is submerged.
* * * * *
(c)Thomas Avery, 1998