Читать книгу Dear Prudence - David Trinidad - Страница 18

MOONLIGHT IN TEMECULA

Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, located at the foothills of Palomar Mountain in Southern California, was destroyed by a wildfire on May 2, 2004. All of the buildings on the 300-acre nature preserve were reduced to ash and rubble.

Four months after the car accident

and two before the end

of the decadent seventies,

I find myself the first official resident

at this rustic artists’ colony.

I hobble around on one crutch,

afraid of encountering rattlesnakes

or bobcats on the dirt paths.

At night I drink scotch

in my hillside cabin.

Isolated, inarticulate with grief,

no poems are possible.

Lost without electricity,

I wrestle with the wood-burning stove.

Helpless to light

the kerosene lamp,

I read Remains of Elmet by a candle’s flutterings.

Ninety-six-year-old Mrs. Dorland

is still vain about her legs.

(I can understand that now.)

She leaves a note in my mailbox

inviting me to Thanksgiving dinner.

Elisabeth makes apple chutney

with Alice B. Toklas’ recipe.

I bring a bottle of white wine.

Tipsy, hobbling back in the dark,

I stop to admire the stars;

my crutch flies out from under me

and I fall flat on my back.

Alone in the cabin, I wake

in the middle of the night

to moonlight so bright

you could read a book by it.

Rachel has been dead almost five months.

I look out at the moonlit hillside,

at a future burnt down to the ground.