"Flight"
Old Muscogee (Creek) Council House
Okmulgee, Oklahoma
 

TIN DOG SALOON

            -for Corina and Scott

I woke up from a nightmare that I’d gone back to the Tin Dog Saloon.  And it wasn’t there.  That it was all a dream.  You see, I saw two satellites meet in the Tulsa sky, blinking the way satellites blink, the sun reflecting off their solar panels, as they twisted through space.  Then they descended between the stars, down into the amber light glow of the city. 

I followed their trajectory to the Tin Dog Saloon, tucked tightly into a side pocket along Harvard Avenue.  It took time to gather courage, this stranger with a strange hat, to enter this place without strangers.  But then I stepped into the glow of neon light and cigarette smoke.  And there they were, my satellites, sitting at the bar, illuminated, sparkly and bright.  Their foreheads touching, transmitting the language of the soul, if the soul could learn to speak, which is the same as the language of the cosmos. 

It was impossible to resist as they drew me inside them, and I became one of them, a satellite, in that cinderblock bar with juke box, cigarette machine, pool tables, and some Tulsa music ghosts from the past.  A place “where you still get what you pay for”.  We huddled together wondering how could it be that we were part of that cosmic miracle for a brief moment in time. 

I’m far away now wondering if it was all a dream, because I miss them.  My satellites - Corina and Scott.  And all those stars – Michelle and Sam and Chris and Rob and Kristie and Tony and Joe and many others.  So I’ve nothing left to do but put this in the mail and wait for a sign that my dream was just a dream, that my satellites and stars will descend upon the Tin Dog Saloon once more, when I am there.

"I wonder what that meteor [the Ahnigito] has seen on its journey to earth, and it amazes me.  It fills me with a sense of wonder to know how little I am, how little time I exist, and somehow my heart and capacity to love and be loved matters.  It really matters."

                        -Feather