The phone app blares just behind my head
on the pillow where Barbara can hear it
the tale of Walt watching for the Undertoad
seeking to see it in the waves
not daring to step into the water
The World According to Garp
holds me for a few minutes before
I slip beneath the waves of sleep
the noise near my head inaudible,
sleep – which eludes Barbara
sometimes for hours
but when she too slips under
her last act of consciousness
is to ask me to turn it off
I awake in the early hours
from a dream in which
a young woman I’ve just met
on the street in a nowhere I know
leads me into her house
and begins to take her clothes off
hippy, boho, vintage – it happens too quickly
for me to know our place in time
A child wakes and calls to her
from another room
a partner arrives
and I apologise for my near-nakedness
I must have misread the signs
I say to him as I redress
She appears with my jacket
at the front door
her eyes apologising
and later I find a note in the pocket
You did not misread the signs! Sorry…
and a telephone number
When I awake properly
I will arise and go to work
I used to imagine a big red bus
as a metaphor for death
careering around the corner
at any unexpected moment
in the end it was a tractor with a trailer
of indeterminable width on a blind bend
that broke my hip but left me alive
Every time I climb into my car
I wonder if today will be the day,
standing, as we all do
feet in the shallows of the Styx,
that the Undertoad finally gets me…
Written for a Poetics prompt by Sanaa over at dVerse Poets Pub to write in the style of Amber Rose Tamblyn…
© Andrew Wilson, 2023