William Loans You A Trailer
Your friend, the poet, William Fairbrother,
has lent you a trailer to camp in.
You arrive at a campsite but it feels as though
you’re living out of this trailer, maybe in Germany,
and not merely camping, as if on holiday or something.
There are several strange features about this trailer but you can’t remember what they are,
first, because you’re dreaming all this,
second, because you’re trying to remember details
after waking. Maybe it was the kinds of clothes it had in drawers, the kitchen utensils
or light switches, upholstery color, or that there was a fire-ring in the middle of the floor?
You arrive at the campground finally, but you have a hard time selecting a campsite
because it feels like you’re in a suburb or open farmland,
but the trees suggest a National Forest. Somehow you become separated from the trailer
and not sure how–either you walk or drive away in the car or truck
you pulled it with, you can’t remember. In any case, you’ve lost it.
You are filled with unease, not only because you’ve lost this trailer
and can’t find it, but because you’re afraid someone might
have stolen it and you should never have let that happen.
You are either walking around from campsite to campsite looking,
or driving, and part of the problem is there’s nothing remarkable about the car
because it’s yours,
and the campground roads are bumpy and connected by very uneven
terrain and you meet people you know, but barely, along the way–
maybe they’re relatives by birth or marriage, in fact.
At some point you either wake and go back to sleep
or for some reason the dream changes, and it feels like
you’ve been wandering looking for this trailer all night,
but then you find it. Even so, something doesn’t feel right
and you don’t get a sense of relief or release from it,
but wake up really tired, not knowing why any of this should matter,
but another friend suggests it may have something to do with poetry.
Dave Mehler and his wife live in Newberg, OR, where they own and run a coffeehouse. He edits the online journal, Triggerfish Critical Review, and his poetry chapbook, God Truck Nature was published in the anthology, Burning Gorgeous: 7 21st Century Poets.
Copyright © 2014 by David Mehler
