Mark's Pages

February 13, 2003:

Mushroom cloud. San Francisco Bay. Terrorized Americans on foot climb a hillside trail toward distant safety. Families, children, old people, tattered and dirty, like refugees fleeing Paris as the Nazi armored columns advanced.

Your mother, old, frail. Sweatsoaked. Weak, flabby; knees buckling. Panting: emphysema.

Your former lover: blonde, 25, gray eyes wide in fear. Pregnant. Your frail and fat old mother is slowing you down. Your lover wants to survive.

Panting, your mother sits on a rock alongside the trail.

"Go," she says. Smiling, her "it's ok" smile. Nods to you both.

You hold her hand as tears fall. Where is your responsibility? A decision between past and future. Your bones and blood decide for you, the voice of nature demanding that you seek a way toward life. You take your lover by the arm and struggle forward.

"Poor mama." You hear your childhood voice crying. "Poor mama. Poor mama."

Scene from the ridgetop looking back. Red sky with yellow lightning. Boiling death cloud climbs the sky. Column of struggling families streaming. Alongside the trail, seated on a large flat rock, the figure of your frail old mother, waiting.

"You will run to the rocks, but the rocks will be melting..."

Recurring dream.