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David Miller

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from Spiritual Letters (Series 3, #4)

The father and mother sat on their front steps, while out in the street their children played a game with a ball. It was my first visit and I had arrived in the early hours, the airport almost deserted; a drunken young cowboy in Stetson, chaps and spurred boots was singing The Streets of Laredo at the top of his voice. Pieces of paper, messages, were threaded through the boxes that the boy made after the woman’s death. Having chased the cat away, he crouched down, talking gently to the frog in the corner of the room, reassuring it. - Could it have been a scholar in a former life, remiss in religious observances? In the dream there were two houses, the second a mirror image of the first, and it was in this second house, this reflection, that I thought I might live. He was asked if the recurrent black rectangle in his paintings was a symbol of himself. At a table in the cool night air, we were discussing the Greek poet whose grave my friend had visited. Two roosters perched on the wall by the outdoor toilet. There were bush-fires here… nearby, my friend wrote; black ash blowing through the window and settling on the final proofs as I was reading them.

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