Red Canyon Petroglyph
Dark Pittsburgh
It was the dream of Pittsburgh again, you
know the one I mean. Where I’m lost, & it’s
dark, & the tank is reading low. There’s a new
moon & fog obscures the stars. All these
streets are steep & narrow & winding, & there’s
no end to them. You’re riding shotgun & you’re
talking nonstop about reincarnation. It’s
raining, what else? In western Pennsylvania,
the woods are overrun with deer. Sometimes
one leaps out of the dark trees & lands
across your hood. Not in this dream, though.
This is the dream of autumn in Bridgeville.
I stop at a roadhouse & ask directions. Next
thing, a woman in a black hooded jogging suit
is calling out my name, telling me how to go on.
She guides me in the local way: go left at the
fork in the road, that’s Painters Run, then
follow that three-four miles to a crossroads
with a blinking red light- remember all those
terrible accidents there?- & bear right till
you get to the double stop signs, where she
doesn’t recall the name of the road, but hang a
left, then another left at Henry’s Tires. Just
before you get to that little chapel where Deke
married Barb in ’86, make a sharp right, which
is Bower Hill Road, which leads to Route 50
which, if you stay on it just past that gas station
that used to be DeLallo’s restaurant, famous for
its gorgonzola pizza, it’ll take you to Maryjane’s
Hollow. Which is where you want to go. I know
she isn’t making sense, but remember this is a
dream & besides, it’s raining. Turns out beneath
her hood, she’s an old old lady, wrinkles, puff of
white hair, greengray eyes, eyes like a deer’s. We
pull out, & my headlights get swallowed by the
darkness. You start up again about astral projection,
& did I believe in it, even a little? I wish you’d stop
talking, it’s so hard to concentrate on the road, &
I don’t say anything, but what I wouldn’t give for
a cold Rolling Rock. Who designed these snaky
streets, anyhow? Who built these one-lane bridges,
who commands the deer to suicide, who made this
moonless night? Who died? I crack my window,
& the perfume of cedars & elderberries comes to me
as a gift. The air is cool & I’m still lost, & tell me,
if it rains in your sleep does it mean rain when you
wake? I’ve gone wrong somehow, now I’m on the
road to Upper St. Clair. You tell me that it’s really
quite simple, I turned left at a point where I should
have gone right. Maybe if I’d listened to your talk
about the transmigration of souls I wouldn’t be in
this fix. Maybe if I worried less about a deer
shattering my windshield. Now your eyes are two
ghosts leaping with green fire, shining with tears.
Fog rolls thick & cold & I can’t wake up among these
dark fields, the dark-bricked houses, the dark roads
of dark Pittsburgh. You say that everybody dies,
& when you die, you want to come back as a deer,
as something graceful & wild. Listen, someone is
calling us home, it’s an old woman & her voice
is full of light. My brakes are bad & I’m riding on
fumes & up ahead’s another series of stark switch-
backed streets. You’re talking about heaven &
hell. I’m lost in these shadowlands, & I’m afraid
of crashing, but then I remember that it’s only a
dream. I wake up, & guess what? It’s raining,
dear.
______________
Rod Williams