Short Paragraphs for Emily

Early this morning I dreamed was bus driver in New York City, which is perhaps the scariest, toughest job, since you have to drive in Manhattan. In my dream I was rolling and tumbling all over the road, slamming on brakes and gunning it to keep up, and I always seemed to be a block away from a major construction site.

Then I woke up and found that someone had been jackhammering the road outside my window for the last half an hour and that some very large vehicle just out of sight had been idling—is still idling, actually—loudly, like a snoring dragon.

I went back to sleep and dreamed I was visiting an old Irish Republican Army friend and his wife and small kids in rural Russia where they had taken refuge away from the conflict. We sat and didn't talk and smoked a cigarette each; I lived every drag in real time. Then he and I and a dozen of our mates dressed up in old fashioned baseball outfits and jumped on a bus; we were on our way to blow something up and this was our cover. I forgot my hat and his wife sent it up to me with one of his kids just as we were leaving.