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Robert Currie
Page 2 Before and Again The car always starts like a dream, motor catching at once, beginning to purr, the sound of a cat crouched by a bowl of milk, a robin beside it, feathers bloodied and torn. I check the rear view mirrors, left side and right, slip the gear shift into reverse, back slowly down the driveway, the house across the street lurching a yard or more out of the way, the car picking up speed, weaving slightly as I turn it onto the street. I shove at the shift, but it won’t slide into Drive -- blasted car will only go backwards. I swivel my head side to side, and there are cars coming behind me, three squealing by on the left, a truck squeezing between me and the curb, not enough room, side mirror clipped and gone. My breath caught in my chest, I can hardly hold the damned wheel, sweat on my palms, I’m cinched in by the seat belt, the car taking off now, faster and faster, I have to stop it, a siren blaring, houses jerking by, people in windows pointing, the car hitting a bump and bouncing, airborne an instant, and faster still, I fight to get my foot on the brake, body slick with sweat, my ankle straining and caught, the tangled sheet wet on my leg. It’s happened before. I know it’ll happen again. The Parents’ Request We would dare ask this much: not that the farmer will run faster when he hears the crash and sees the roiling fountain of dust; not that he will organize the others more quickly, heaving one end of the truck, forcing a rock beneath to ease the weight, your chest rising again; not even that you will be thrown farther, the door wrenched wide, metal torn, the truck rolling over and over, stopping at last a yard from where you lie, stunned but unbroken. No, we ask this, only this: that before the right front wheel catches the loose stones on the edge of the road, before the truck launches itself at the ditch, you will glance down at the seat belt and snap it around your waist, the belt that will grip you tight in the battered truck, holding you safer than even our arms. The Mistress after William Holman Hunt The shapely young woman has been given so much-- rooms in a mansion, rich carpets and draperies, an exotic clock trimmed with mourning nymphs, tall mirrors in which to admire her beauty, the luxuriously coloured shawl wrapped around her gown with its border of lace, a pet cat to charm her through empty hours, the piano with its gleaming finish, its delicate filigree, on which she picks out tunes overheard in her youth-- all gifts from her jaunty Victorian lover who lolls in his chair, the fingers of his left hand idly tapping piano keys, his other hand reaching around her thigh as she strives to rise from his lap. She looks somewhere far off, perhaps outside to the garden, where she might have run and laughed had she known such a place as a child, her eyes staring and wide with sudden comprehension, the cat at play on the floor, pawing a wounded bird.
© Copyright, 2015, Robert
Currie. |