*

At least she’s still got her smart Hermes jacket and a sensible navy skirt.

*

Last night I had a long dream where I was living in my dream house, a scattering of modernist cubes on a rolling landscape of grass on a cliff overlooking the sea, with a dark thicket of woods behind and miles of emptiness and silence.

I drank coffee on the deck and listened to the waves and the rising birdsong as the sun came up. I went for a long run in the woods and down to the shore.

The house was still and silent. I looked at a collection of small ceramic animals my wife had made, all brilliant glowing red with black spots, set out on a long, low table against a wall in the kitchen.

It was as if the universe held open its arms and gave me my fondest, deepest desires. All that beauty and wildness, all that emptiness and order, all that calm and stillness.

My dream brain’s gift to itself, perhaps.

It was deeply, wonderfully good.

*

In another dream I was on an oceanliner and we were tying anchors to the feet of all these Nazi soldiers and tossing them overboard, alive. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. The hemp lines would unfurl from the deck and whizz down into the dark, frothy sea, and when the slack was out the men would be snatched from the deck and disappear over the side. They never cried out. They just looked at us as they went over.

We were merciless in our work, and it was hard labor, nor was there an end to it.

*

In the next dream a man stood in my front yard, mumbling to me. One of his front teeth was loose and kept jutting out over his lip as he spoke, getting tangled in it. The tooth was small and misshapen and decayed, the color of snot.

I kept wanting to stop him talking and just reach up and yard that tooth out of his head.

*

I am not convinced that my dream life is any less significant than my waking one.

*

One of my deepest pleasures is to get out in the woods and go for long, long walks.

Going there with my grandbaby makes it even better.

I think he likes it, too.

Oh, hell yeah.

*

I got it so damn bad for that kid, I tell you what.

What can you do?

You can’t do nuthin’, is what.

You just gotta love him up.

*

The older I get, the more I like it.

*

Since I was a kid, all I ever wanted to be was married to a woman who loved me that I could share my secrets with, and kiss on and stuff.

Plus be an astronaut or a deep-sea diver.

I got the woman, and I got to be a police. I got love and a scary job and a little bitty old house with a real white picket fence and a dog and a kid and a grandbaby and all manner of terrors and heartbreak and disasters to endure.

I reckon I just about got it all.

*

Love.

High, wide, and handsome.

*

Namaste.

***