The Quest Room

(for my observant and intelligent friend, Corwin Watts)

I am here in my Quest Room

You read that correctly

It's not my guest room

It is here where The Black Hills

once surrounded me

where I now keep them deep inside

Here are the fallen sandstone boulders

of my youth near my parent's home

The house still there

but it's no longer home

just like so many houses there

were home and are not now

the warmth I once felt

Here are the Ponderosa Pines

I once sat next to

to peel bits of bark

Sometimes an ant or other bug

would crawl through the grooves

between the segments

There are the pasque flowers

in the spring

don't call them crocus

because that's not what they are

but I remember pale blue

handfuls of them

taken home to Mother

as I rounded the rock

on Hangman's Hill descending

to the small field

on the side where our home

looked west to the rain

crossing the layers

of hills to the south

or the setting of the winter sun

that warmed the basement cement

where I could sit dreaming

of where I might go

or what I might do

It's the home where I managed

to slay the dragons of music

on the peaks of a piano

tossing my fingerings

into the volcanoes of disapproval

I bike down the gravel road

past the dozer cuts that give

this Dinosaur Hill something

about which to complain

That very road almost killed me

as I gassed my father's car

more than the ice would tolerate

to spin a one-eighty

rear wheels just six inches

from locking themselves

over the edge and rolling me

to a severe injury or worse

The schools teachers and students

come into my Quest Room

challenging me to change

a painful past that many

would also experience

with no one to talk to

People in South Dakota

never talked about being queer

especially in a house filled

with conservative politicians

at my parent's summer parties

Here a governor

there a mayor

This is my mother's friend

married to a successful dentist

This is my father's friend

the superintendent of schools

They know everybody

but the Indians who walked up

the road with their children

in the cold of winter

without coats

only to get a five dollar bill

Here

I want to say now

take my coat

Here's one from my mother

a mink

Dad has several

and blankets

take all these blankets

Wrap your children in them

wrap your children in them

wrap your children in them

a five dollar bill is not very warm

when he could have taken them

to a motel

given them clothes

bought them food

called someone anyone

leaving me with the guilt

only a child can feel

staring out the windows

standing on green wool carpet

Invite them in

Don't turn them away with money

They turn and walk away

in my Quest Room

Here's a dragon I can't slay

Here's a dragon that slays me

And with that the bubble bursts

on the Quest Room

I flounder in what's left

of that liquid memory

looking across the room

at what created this

in large letters

large enough to read

large enough to stab

any dream

from over fifty years ago

Many quests and dragons slain

only some of them

still breathe fire and smoke

fire and smoke

and where there's fire

sometimes there isn't warmth

Barry G. Wick