Slick Calm Dream

Haunting Summer Evening Along the Muskingum

It’s the middle one
that haunts me, 
and it has 
for as long
as I can remember.

It sits on a quiet stretch
of a dead-end gravel road
along the low bank
of the shallow Muskingum, 
out were folks seldom go.

It’s one
of a dozen cottages
setting back in a row  
with long grassy lawns 
stretching down to docks
on the muddy river.

Sunset on the Muskingum River near Marietta, Ohio by Irv Olsin

It’s always just past dusk 
in the dream, dark
but for a few small lights 
on a couple of the docks, 
another on the front porch 
of the middle cottage, 
the only one with lights on inside.

Fireflies flicker randomly
in its front yard. 
Voices of baseball announcers 
on the radio spill out of its screen door
and fade into the early evening 
cacophony of frogs and cicadas 
and the occasional barking dog.

The shadows 
of a couple of people
are always slowly 
moving about 
in the cottage.

It’s hard 
to make out 
their conversation 
through the sounds 
of crickets and toads 
and the occasional roar
of baseball on the radio.

Then comes 
the slow rolling crunch 
of car tires turning
off the dark road 
onto the gravel driveway.

Headlights cut
across the front yard.
Shadows in the house freeze,
voices cease,
someone turns off the radio.
Outside someone turns off the car 
and kills its lights.

It’s dark and still,
quieter than before.
A car door opens and closes
and footsteps on gravel 
break the silence.

Someone turns off the lights in the house 
and steps out onto the front porch, 
the squeak of the screen door 
about the only sound 
you can hear, anymore.

The glowing tip 
of a lit cigarette 
brightens as the person 
on the porch
inhales, then exhales. 

Fireflies flicker randomly
in the front yard and down
along the slick calm river.
Someone in the cottage
turns the radio back on, 
just louder than before.