Cracked Six

Time collapses yet again. Yesterday I saw one of Bart’s sisters at a contemporary art museum in the next town. She lives 2000 miles from me and was not visiting, but there she was. On the far wall of the print exhibit, a familiar name, a project combining the efforts of a poet and an artist. Bart’s sister had lived with the poet in Santa Fe when we were living there.

Our home was an apartment in the basement of a house on a sleepy street just the right distance from the plaza. I remember the sky there, the open, open sky. I remember walking down the hill toward the plaza on warm mornings and looking up at the snowy mountain tops. I remember the colors, the faded oranges and yellows of the craggy landscape. I remember the jewelry sellers and the smell of fry bread. I remember the food at Molly’s where the locals went. I remember filling glass mugs with chili in the restaurant where I worked. I remember dinners with Anna and the poet at the house in town and seeing a brown bear across the river at his ranch. I remember the enchanted Christmas walking with Bart and hundreds of others through the midnight streets lit by candles in brown paper bags. I remember Bart painting portraits in the kitchen. I remember it all.

Yesterday the poet returned from his journeying, from his wandering through time and space, and he brought Bart’s sister with him on his arm. For a moment, we were all together again. The poet, Anna, you, and me. The poet’s poem that lay in the glass case on the far wall of the print exhibit began … True record of my seance with Anna.