Dandelions

"Tomorrow night, will you remember what you said tonight?
Tomorrow night, will all the thrill be gone?
...
Tomorrow night, will you be with me when the moon is bright?
And will you say all the lovely things you said tonight?"

-- B. B. King, "Tomorrow Night," from One Kind Favor

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Readers of this blog may remember the guy at the coloring party who spoke of his hometown's unusual name, Washington Court House, OH. Well, today, I went there. Teachers taped crafts and joked with each other in the back of the multi-purpose room while I played a turtle and a bunny; murals covered both walls with cartoonish spaceships and children dreaming (in a space shuttle's window you could clearly see Cartman from "South Park" peering into the void, which was odd); the principal gave up her parking space for our van. The folks there are nice, and the town seemed on the "okay" side of tiny.

On the way back, I played B.B. King's 2008 album, "One Kind Favor." I wonder if it's his goodbye to the blues and life, what with the tracks "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean," "How Many More Years," and "Tomorrow Night." A lot of hope, and a lot of realism--I mean, the guy's been on the brink of death for years. The album art tends toward the stuff of legend, mostly of King's back, guitar neck peeking above his shoulder, as he views an empty landscape.

It's good stuff, just the blues that made him famous, with the age that makes him wise. This album is to King what The Tempest is to Shakespeare.

(I think.)

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As I drove south to Cincinnati, I saw to the east what looked like a dandelion farm: a field full of yellow, spotted with the green of stems and competing grass, within a sort of ridiculous white-posted fence that trapped the wild weeds, leading like the Yellow Brick Road to a run-down blue farm house. Softly encroached the green, but the dandelions won on their home turf.

I asked the van, "Is that a dandelion farm?"

It was.

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All forms of rain attacked us on the road: the clouds dripped, jetted, sprinkled and tinkled by turns, shifting weather with the weight of somber shadow. It has been the kind of day that simply removes your motivation to do anything without replacing it. It is a gray thief, a Druid trickster.

But through the clouds flashed sunlight, and for mere seconds at a time, the mist torn from the wet streets behind passing cars and trucks transformed from sickly white to brilliant silver, vapored vipers chasing tires. They hissed in the rain.

--

I must pack everything I own in the next two days and heft/drive/heft it into the loft apartment in Covington. Perhaps prematurely, I have amassed more furniture and clutter in the last two weeks than I have in the last eight months. My ratio of space to possessions continues to change, and the tiny path through it all dwindles, blocked at almost every potential turn.

But there is solitude and calm at the end of this labor (roughly translated, "an entrance code for a security system and a kitchen"). In a week's time, with my high windows staring over rooftops, what will I see when I wake up?

Dandelion farms, hundreds of them, stacked neatly in city blocks and floating in the river. And seeds and petals will fall at my feet, spreading, like wallpaper unrolling on the sidewalk.

One kind favor, please: See that my old room is kept clean. I'm leaving tomorrow night.