I'll tell you a half-dozen things that happened to me in Indiana when I went that far west to teach. You tell me if it was worth it. I lived in the country with my dog— part of the bargain of coming. And there was a pond with fish from, I think, China. I felt them sometimes against my feet. Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges, to eat the grass. I'm not lying. And I saw coyotes, two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly unenclosed fields. And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped into the road just-oh, I mean just, in front of my car— and we both made it home safe. And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses, or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house, and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth, he, too, would have hooves trimmed for the Indiana winter, and apples did it, and a rope over the neck did it, so I won something wonderful; and there was, one morning, an owl flying, oh pale angel, into the hay loft o...
Marvelous pairing of image and poem.
ReplyDeleteRichard Brautigan...decades ago I walked into a small bookstore asking if they had The Abortion by Brautigan. The clerk had not a clue about this novel, and directed me over to the aisle holding medical books. I explained it wouldn't be in that section. (She later ordered the book for me. Oh, the old days before Amazon.com...)
Oh gosh....I haven't read Brautigan in years. This brought back great memories of a wildly creative man.
ReplyDeletePyzahn