In the dream, I'm in a second hand-clothing store, wandering among endless racks of dress shirts and classy suits. Dust motes float in the dim light.
I notice a small room lit by a single overhead lamp. It contains but a single rack of elegant robes, each in vivid colors with fancy lapels, threads that James Bond might wear while seducing one of his many women. I reach for a plaid robe with bright red lapels. Suddenly, I’m awake, anxious, in my moonlit bedroom.
I know exactly what the dream portends. I glance at the hook on which my old robe hangs. Relief! Still there. If robe years are like dog years, it's older than me.
I can see the large patches where I've had a tailor salvage it after it grew some very large holes in the wrong places.
"Do you want exactly the same kind and color of cloth," I remember the tailor asking in an incredulous voice.
"No," I had said, "it's just a robe. Do your best."
Having had it patched doesn't relieve my present anxiety that it may one day disappear. When my wife looks at it, I see the rag basket in her eyes. When it falls to the floor, my dog sleeps on it.
I won’t soon be parted from this robe. My life isn't a Bond film. No one, besides my wife, cares whether a little flesh is hanging out here and there. And who else would see me as I stump around in it?
I pull the comforter over my head and drift back to sleep.
lucky moon —
even when waning no one
threatens to replace you
I notice a small room lit by a single overhead lamp. It contains but a single rack of elegant robes, each in vivid colors with fancy lapels, threads that James Bond might wear while seducing one of his many women. I reach for a plaid robe with bright red lapels. Suddenly, I’m awake, anxious, in my moonlit bedroom.
I know exactly what the dream portends. I glance at the hook on which my old robe hangs. Relief! Still there. If robe years are like dog years, it's older than me.
I can see the large patches where I've had a tailor salvage it after it grew some very large holes in the wrong places.
"Do you want exactly the same kind and color of cloth," I remember the tailor asking in an incredulous voice.
"No," I had said, "it's just a robe. Do your best."
Having had it patched doesn't relieve my present anxiety that it may one day disappear. When my wife looks at it, I see the rag basket in her eyes. When it falls to the floor, my dog sleeps on it.
I won’t soon be parted from this robe. My life isn't a Bond film. No one, besides my wife, cares whether a little flesh is hanging out here and there. And who else would see me as I stump around in it?
I pull the comforter over my head and drift back to sleep.
lucky moon —
even when waning no one
threatens to replace you
by Ray Rasmussen
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
first published in Contemporary Haibun Online, V1, N3, Dec. 2005
1 comment:
very moving. it is really hard to explain our strange attachment to some old close. It feels like they have their own kind of spirit.
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