I'm a Catholic. I'm a Catholic, see, but the black church, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the black church, because the black church isn't the same church, Adam. I know you're a Christian, but you don't know this church. You don't know.

See they think the bigger your stomach is, the bigger your holy ghost. You don't know this, I know you don't know this, Adam, but this is what they believe. They believe this. So Joe says to me last Sunday, "Where's your stomach, Tony? What happened to your stomach?" And this is right in front of my mom, my kids, that he's asking me this, see?

And see, I got stomach muscles, look - I mean I don't have no gut, I have muscles. So it's hard for me to relax them, and so I don't have no stomach, and so to him I don't got no holy ghost. He thinks I've got a demon in me, then, you see? He's asking me, where's my stomach? But he's not asking me anything, he's saying something.

So look, what I'm saying is that this is just wrong, man. That's not what it is. I'm going to tell you this. This man is telling me that he knows something. No, he doesn't. He doesn't know anything. There's signs in this world, yeah, and a lot of them have to do with your stomach, yeah - I mean, did you ever know of that man Samuel Johnson? That man, and that's a wise man, he said to never trust a man who doesn't listen to his stomach - and he was right! Seriously, I'm hungry, by the way - I mean, I'm listening. But I'm telling you right now that they's signs. That's true. But we don't know how to read that script. No way. They're mysterious, Adam.

I mean this place is mysterious. You read books, I know you're reading the books all the time, well this here's a mystery story. I mean the world. It's a mystery book. You know the ones, where you feel like you know what's going to happen, or what might happen, or at least that something is going to happen, you feel it getting ready to happen, and you've got this tickle, this shiver like everything you're reading is trying to tell you what's going to happen but you've got to turn the page, you've got to see the next page cause you don't know what it's gonna be? That's what this is, that's what's in here, in these signs, in our stomaches, in our eyes, even, Adam. It's a tickle, it's like you're sprawled out in the park and they's these blades of grass on the back of your hand, man. That's what it is.

Grass on the back of your hand, man.

My third night in this room and I have a dream about my children's hair and my hair. I dream that there are bright blue beads bound-up in my daughter's pigtails, and crystal coloured roses hanging from my braids. My son is sleeping in his perambulator, in my dream, with green leaves woven in and out of his thick nappy hair. We are in an old-fashioned train, and I do not know why. This almost worries me, but doesn't. We are riding somewhere, giggling as we go, holding our heads out the window and watching our hair grow farther and farther and farther out into the whipping winds.

When I wake I feel the soft heave-ho of my daughter sleeping against my side.

I stay awake and watch the light from the street lamp on the ceiling for awhile. Neither the street light nor the ceiling change, but the light swells and shifts and moves, and so do the shadows.

Things have really changed in this new place, I guess. And maybe things really can change. I brought my children here for a new life. Maybe we are finding it. Maybe I am discovering things that are real, finally. Am I? Is this all more real than it's ever been before? Maybe so. Maybe not, though, maybe not. Maybe it's only real in the same way that everything before was real. It feels real. Maybe we will get somewhere real sometime soon. Maybe I should go back to sleep.

Maybe I am drinking diamonds in the desert, and maybe you are too.

I've got an idea for how to get the moon into my dark brown wooden wheelbarrow. It's nice and old and has one wheel and they used to pull me around in there, but tomorrow I think the moon will fit in it. We could give it to someone nice, but I think I would want to give it to you. Or we could just bring it to play in the yard for awhile, and run through the sprinklers with the moon, you and I.

We'd have to get it back, and I've got a plan for that too, but you'll have to bring those chairs from the kitchen.

I wrote you forty-nine nice lines outside the parish hall, and said them over and over to myself. I scribbled them on a napkin and looked at the ink-running palimpsests, like the layers of a forty-nine line cake in my hands. I buried them in my billfold and pressed them down in my pocket neatly. They were nice lines and I said them quietly, leaning against the wall, watching the buzz of clouds and stars above the street, above the lake, above the wavy waterfalls and reeds.

I wrote you forty-nine nice lines and then sang them aloud while we stared at the ceiling and slept. I secretly wished that we were staring at stars, and fell asleep, fell asleep, fell asleep. And I dreamed that God might have seen me standing outside the parish hall. And in fact, I'm sure that he did. I know God watched me scrawling these lines, because I did not feel alone, not at all, though all of my friends were inside or already gone. Max had just left us, and the wake had just started, but out I went to wed words from my head to this world. And I felt marriage, not melancholy. Me and my obsolete old body, me, macabre middle-class man of the Middle-Mid-West - I felt alive, felt married, felt love.

I'm an old, old man and I haven't written poetry for years, years, years. Didn't need to write, didn't need to read, I suppose. And you were the book that I couldn't stop thumbing-through, couldn't put down over lunch, had to read. There was some heavy presence, some weight, some significance, in your words, and I marveled at their mystery in my open hands. I read until I could only carry you with me, in my pocket or my pick-up, to lunch or to the fields, too afraid to read anything closer to the end.

Then forty-nine nice lines came into my head like a fire, and I spoke them out, wrote them out, sang them to you.

Something happened here. That's what makes these white walls and this gray window gleam some indigo glow.

Something happened here years ago, and it left these four corners to coruscate forever its soft sad light.

If you're standing in the corner, which you are, then you can see how Shannon must have seen the room before he etched a cross into the cushioned crease of paint and pressed his hand against it, knowing his only hope was to cross. Letting his linens swing in the lingering breeze on the tree limb, he left an open window, an empty room, and a pile of books on the floor.

Shannon lived in this room before you.
He left a pile of books, a cross, and an indigo glow.

He lowers his head onto the pillow and begins to climb the trees of his unconscious. In one single breath, he lays back and reaches up to the first tree branch. The frames overlap. They are the same moment. Up, up, up - his rest carries him upward.

He climbs skyward, sleeping soundly, silently stretching from branch to branch. Here is a postcard of this great tree; it is smothered in sunset, and shows the stark streak of his silhouette scaling its side. The postcard is addressed to his mother in thick green ink. It floats out of his hand and drifts through the arms of the tree and onto his bedcovers below. Still moving higher, he looks down at how his bed is resting on a field of books, trees growing out of their open pages. He climbs his tree, he climbs his tree. He begins to hear melodies that sound like the sunset; both the sound and the sunset are in the air of his dream, this is their location. He is not really thinking about this. He is climbing higher. The rainbow of book-covers drops farther and farther away. He's not even sure where he's going, to be honest. Just higher. Further up, further in-like. To the sky, he supposes. The tree begins to sway, slightly. Soon the branches swell and swerve and shake and stir and spill him into the breeze. He tries not to change the rhythm of his steps, not to doubt his stairway. He wishes he was there, in the sky, but he is not - he is still holding on to whatever is there. He looks up and around at the sky. He climbs toward the sky.

It seems like there will be family there, in the sky. Family like he's known before. There will be barbecues, he thinks. The sky has barbecues in back yards so big that they are fields. Back yards that have hills. He has never been to the sky, but he expects it will feel familiar. Up he goes, up he goes.

He wishes he was in the sky, and climbs toward it in his tree. And no, he can no longer see his bed below. Two children on bicycles are wandering around out there by the clouds now. And now there are less and less branches; and there is more and more space. More and more sky. He is almost in the sky, maybe. He is still moving higher. He is waiting for a moment, for the release. He is waiting for when there are no more tree branches, when he has to let go to crawl into the sky, where even the allegory slips and flutters down prettily towards the book-field. He is waiting for some kind of release. Each branch is smaller and more tenuous, some feel almost whispy. He hangs onto them more tightly than ever, anticipating the last of them, unsure of what will happen then.

He is reaching for some kind of release, for some surrender to the sky.
He is sleeping, on top of his covers, waiting.

Where is it, Sarah? I'll tell you exactly where it is: Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Because I threw it out the window, that's why. Chucked it at a stop sign, actually.

Because it creeps me out, Sarah. It's strange. Because it's strange. Because it's not a normal thing to hang around your rear-view mirror. I mean, why do you think? For three hours, I'm driving with that thing dangling a foot away from me and it's annoying me and I'm just about ready to die it's so annoying. Just before Ypsilanti, this hornet flies in my window and scares the shit out of me, hovers around my face for like five seconds, buzzes me two or three times, and I'm about ready to jump out of the car or hit a truck or something when it shoots back out into the air. Well, I was all flustered and upset and needed to throw something, and there you have it.

Well, because I could have died. Did you consider that? Wouldn't you throw the first thing you saw? Wouldn't you throw the obscene piece of trash that had been swinging around right next to you for 200 miles?

Yes, I'm sure it was not a wasp.

Because it was a hornet, Sarah. That's why.