The Happy Wanderer

By Bruce Costello

The sky is vast, the stars numinous, the moon low. The trees, asleep, are listening through their leaves though they make neither movement, nor sound. Fields, bathed in silver, stretch to dark hills with here and there a glint of creek or pond.

The first ray of the sun travels through my mind like a slow vapour trail and vanishes into a cloud.

More rays appear. I see a misty meadow. Today I will tramp there and lie on the grass, gazing skyward.

A woman with blonde hair and blue eyes approaches wearing a red sweater that stirs the dust deep within me. She smiles as if she knows me or would like to.

I feel like many parts of something or someone I used to be.

I am a bottle feeding a baby.

I am a snakes and ladders board children are playing on.

I am a mahogany office desk, telling people what to do.

I am a funeral casket not knowing who is dead inside me.

Drawn by the scent of pines, I stroll along a soft path of needles to a crescent bay. I wriggle my toes in the sand and breathe deeply.

The sea watches. Night swallows day. The world goes away. All is warmth and darkness like the inside of a lazy mammal lying in a meadow wondering at the stars.

From the sea, an itinerant moon rises dripping water and streaks across the sky, striking the red button beside my bed.

Hurried footsteps. A woman’s voice.

“Mr Bruce! Where on earth did all this sand come from?”

But her blue eyes smile. She opens her gray nurse’s uniform to reveal a red sweater, then skips away with a follow-me flick of her blonde hair, bare feet trailing pine needles.