scene 5-13-2018 - it is dark and misty in Queens
—
[1 and 2 are telephone poles, identical and side-by-side]
1: just yonder, we’re excited by the prospect. but if we can transport you to a memory, make it thus: Manhattan.
2: we came on the foxhole evening to it.
1: dear. oh dear.
2: i’m shaking! eyes up, like a foggen halo, just look at it there.
1: oh there, like a witch’s dream, like a big stormy dream up there.
2: there, do you think?
1: must make the choice, anyway.
2: we’ve been choosing it.
1: well, i have.
2: and i.
1: and so together.
2: we’re shaking from the tremulous New York.
[they link inner elbows, each making prayer hands.]
1: i’ve met the loveliest cats in this junkyard.
2: a young man in a black hat with black hair comes by at night to feed them.
1: i caught him once with his sly bag, velcroing it after putting in the goods.
2: leftover cat cans. and the cats are at my feet, little moonchildren, but you know that with my head i’m diving the canal.
[2 unlinks arms and slides down and into a backstroke]
2: i’m swimming it, girl.
1 [sighing]: and so together. i’ve met the loveliest cats here, this graveyard.
2 [still swimming]: it’s a cemetery if it’s got a fence, if it’s in the city.
1: if it’s proper. and this is Queens.
2: but we remember times in other cemeteries, just as. there’s a difference, we have to say.
1: meaning between daytime and nighttime; picnic cemetery visits and Boo visits at twilight.
2: between one fence swinging open on the street and a whole wide gate to dead folks.
1: a whole wide gate to dead folks. man.
2: girl.
[2 stops swimming, stands apart from 1]
2: if i’m being honest, it reminds me of winter. yes, it is warm, and yes misty.
1 [sitting, as on a couch]: and that can be December too, in the urban clime.
2: that is the setting and the scene, but as we remember it, too close, it might have been as tall.
1: you’re sentimental.
2: always. it all seems taller from within, as dense. like there’s a city apart, up spiral staircases in network up the buildings.
1: like a country girl would think.
2: hm.