Article Contributed on: 8/6/2009 4:54:09 PM
Having a nap on the couch after a
long, long night, Terry Best
came to me
in my dream, and
the eyes beneath his
scruffy brow were not manic
or bloodshot, and
his knotted hair was
no longer tangled, but combed-
out in silky strands the color of
an August Midnight, and
his hands were not shaking, and
he didn't smell of sweat
and cigarette butts and two-
dollar booze, more like an
afternoon rain, as if
God had bathed him in a
pool of melted snowflakes, and
his voice was not loutish or
drunk, but sweet, and gentle, like
an angel singing poetry, and
standing before me
with his back straight and
his swollen face now smooth and
glowing with a thousand beams
of sunlight, he smiled, and
asked me if there was anything
he could do for me on his way
into the light, and I wept
so deep and so bitterly that I
could not answer him, my
self-loathing rising to the
surface of me in rolling waves
of shadow, and it was here,
in the dream, that I
felt Terry lean over me and
gently, lovingly, begin to remove
the heavy iron chains that I had
been wrapping myself in, and for
every rusted link he hoisted
onto his own shoulders,
I felt a bit of sunlight on my
cheek, and when I awoke, he
was gone, and with him went the
heaviness I had carried since
I was a boy, and walking
outside to get the mail,
I heard the squawk of an old
crow circling overhead, its
ashen feathers crooked and its
black beak gnawed and split,
and after it dipped an oily wing
at me, it disappeared into
the blossom of a cloud, and
I went inside and poured myself
a tall glass of orange juice.