Audio Link: After midnight
After midnight - text
It was after midnight. I was awake. I stepped out of the back door, pulling on a pair of pants for modesty. I might have come see you, but how far would I have to walk. And I would not want to startle you at this hour. I could have simply slipped back into bed with my wife – but she would be satisfied enough to see me in the morning.
My pants were quite loose and rode down around my hips. I put my hands into my pockets for convenience. Except for all of the night sounds all around me – especially insects calling – the night was quiet. Down the driveway and out to the sidewalk, I stepped carefully in my bare feet. I turned and walked to the north. The earth was hard beneath my feet. Sidewalk. Pavement. In only minutes I was walking in the thick, soft grass at Central. It was dry, mostly. The clouds overhead, reflecting the lights of the city, were moving. I could see some dark gaps out through their cottony glow to the universe beyond. There was a moon – perhaps watching, perhaps hiding – when I turned to look back over my right shoulder.
At some point I had begun speaking my mind’s thoughts aloud, narrating my progress – what I was seeing and thinking. I kept my voice quiet, although there was no one around to hear me. There was some wind, lightly whispering against my skin. My senses were all awakened. Truly, everything felt as if all of this – the universe within my mind’s reach – was all there for me as I walked along, mostly aimlessly.
In almost no more time than it takes to say what I was doing, I reached the oval track, the cinders were a sharp industrial surface against the soles of my feet. I followed the white lines outlining the lanes, placing one foot in front of the other, almost as if I were placing them in a kind of pocket. I started one lap, the lighted flags of Fraser on Mt. Oread came into view as I turned around the far end. Step by step, I completed one lap and fell silent.
The curve ahead of me. And again I came to the straight and narrow once more. I thought of one love. Around the bend, stepping over a water line that ran to a sprinkler in the infield, I walked silently with some deliberation.
The second lap completed. I turned off from the track.
A circle, the diameter of my outstretched arms was marked on a concrete square for putting the shot. I started spinning, slowly, the reflecting clouds and the darkness whirling past. My eyes looked up. My arms raised up. Soon I was looking straight overhead, the world still spinning around me even when I stopped – facing the moon. I paused with a sense of stillness within some wonder.
I thought of a second love.
I jogged easily across the grass on a diagonal, the shortest distance to take me back to my home, one hand holding onto my waistband, the other swinging freely. The moon was nearly ahead of me. I thought of a third love.
And then a fourth. I reached fifteenth street and slowed back to a walk. The loves came into my mind quickly, one after another. I named them silently, feeling them close – their absence still a welcome presence. More of my human loves are women and girls, but not all of them. Some reside deeply in my memory. Some have lived in my thoughts for only a short time. I cannot hold any of my loves fast and sure, but I hold them as I am able. I am held by my loves. Sometimes a fragment of a look or a voice is all that I can recall. But even the night wind is something against my skin.
One love that came before I even began counting is the one to whom I cannot return. But there is now another longtime love. She will still be sleeping next to my own place in our bed.
Back in my yard, I look up at the moon, open to my face for my farewell to the night. The cat waits at the window in the study.
A glass of cold water – then to find a notebook and a pen to record notes for my own remembering of this commonplace walk – if nothing else, a simple stroll in the night.
This is something to do. It is something to walk in the universe – alone, yet with the sense that I am not alone. It is well to attend to the worlds and lives that enter my mind. It is something to to love and to feel loved. I use these words to remind me of something I would not forget.
And then to turn off the light and to slip back into bed.
Tomorrow will come – empty as a pocket.
I will open my eyes, raise my hands, and walk. There will be something more to it than that, I suppose. And again, I will see some of you in front of me – my loves. Maybe on the second time around the track – or the third.
Usually I will find my way back home before supper.
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