Then I Close My Eyesby Gary Short
in a dream between Morelia and Guadaljara.
The bus passes in the fallen
dark—graveyards and silent bells
in the still church towers of the towns
where women and men
and children sleep,
and where a mean and angry man,
sleeps, because there is always
a mean and angry man, and where
someone not sleeping weeps,
because there is always
someone weeping.
The bus swerves through the Sierra Madre,
the driver dodging potholes
and occasional cattle, their eyes
a red glow in the swaying headlights
as my head and flickering dream
bump against the cold window glass.
In sleep I touch the ticket in my shirt pocket
to make sure it is still there.
Somewhere a long braid, a cut cord of black hair,
keepsake in a drawer. Somewhere
a scorpion waits inside the warm dark of a shoe.
Somewhere under a lean moon a lean dog shivers.
A net of stars and the vague sense
of inner weather. All the passengers on this bus,
their breathing a steady sea.
In motion, all of us, some are leaving
someone they love,
and there are others,
blessed me, I am among them,
making a way, slowly making a way
through the night
toward the beloved.