An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky (28 page)

At every step the boy remembered another word, but they were dim words, unconnected to anything he saw, anything in the world. He kept repeating to himself, “and and and.”

And when he had walked down the hill he found himself by habit walking home. He knew it was his home when he saw it. He knocked on the door and when the door opened he saw a man who bent down and opened his arms and looked at him
.

Then the boy remembered, and he said one word. The boy said, “Father.”

I put the paper down and walked to my office window.

I could see the yellow lawn and the leafless trees through the transparent reflection of my own face. Through my own face I could see the pale sky, so very pale, blank as a page, and I thought to myself,
too bright, too bright
.

“Father,” I said.

And my own face said “Father” back to me.

 

 

THE END

I
T HAS BEEN MY CONTINUOUS LUCK TO HAVE TWO OLD FRIENDS
as primary readers for nearly every word I've written, and their attention to this book both encouraged me to keep writing it, and made it better than it would have been left to my hands alone: thank you Sally Keith and Srikanth Reddy. Much of the novel was pondered and put together while running many miles with Michael Lundblad, and his patience in listening to me talk as we trained for a marathon was an attention greatly needed, and I hope reflected in the book itself. Thank you to my father, and to Agelia Dumas, for reading drafts of the book and offering support and advice in return; thank you to my mother for the same. Thank you to Chris Fischbach and everyone at Coffee House Press. Thank you to Laird Hunt for publishing Book
III
, Chapter 6 in the
Denver Quarterly
. Lastly, but a circular last so that it is always also the beginning, thank you to Iris, Hana, and Kristy, who in me exert such a tow that image reverts back to substance, and that substance is home.

The poet who falls into and through the volcano is in memory of Craig Arnold.

Many other books wend their way through the fabric of this one, a tribute and a study of those works and writers I most love. Readers of this book will find echoes in homage to Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, John Berryman, John Bunyan, T. S. Eliot, Henry David Thoreau, William Blake, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George MacDonald, Walter Benjamin, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf, among others.

An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky

was designed at Coffee House Press,

in the historic Grain Belt Brewery's

Bottling House near downtown Minneapolis.

The text is set in Bembo.

The mission of Coffee House Press is to publish exciting, vital, and enduring authors of our time; to delight and inspire readers; to contribute to the cultural life of our community; and to enrich our literary heritage. By building on the best traditions of publishing and the book arts, we produce books that celebrate imagination, innovation in the craft of writing, and the many authentic voices of the American experience.

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OFFEE HOUSE PRESS
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LLP
; Mary Ebert and Paul Stembler; Chris Fischbach and Katie Dublinski; Fredrikson & Byron,
P.A
.; Sally French; Anselm Hollo and Jane Dalrymple-Hollo; Jeffrey Hom; Carl and Heidi Horsch; Kenneth Kahn; Alex and Ada Katz; Stephen and Isabel Keating; the Kenneth Koch Literary Estate; Kathy and Dean Koutsky; the Lenfestey Family Foundation; Carol and Aaron Mack; Mary McDermid; Sjur Midness and Briar Andresen; the Nash Foundation; the Rehael Fund of the Minneapolis Foundation; Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner,
P.A
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