My night in Treadwell started fair enough but weather grew steadily worse all the way to downright bad through the 2+ hour drive but i’m still thinking that’s ok, i’m alright, i’m a trooper and i do get there with only one little stop and one little wrong-cut and just at the end but that wasn’t my fault, that there road was simply badly signed but anyway i still arrive at 6:30 for a 7pm start but the street is totally dark and the place is totally dead and now the snow’s coming down like one broad white blanket and now i’m wondering if 7 means 7 or 7 means well…something else…and there is nothing around, i mean absolutely nothing around, until i notice this one thing around and it’s right around and it’s this large unleashed mastiff like the one in the omen and he’s begun a barking and he’s begun a sniffing to right outside my car window as if to take my order, but i ain’t got one, or at least one that he’ll follow, so i decide to drive away, right on past the place and find the brand new high-school which looks fine enough, but it’s also on a dead end so i’m forced back around to right back where i was, but now the dog’s nowhere, which don’t make me feel better and actually probably worse and by now it’s 5 to 7 and still nobody’s showing and still the lights are dark, so i recheck my date book and recheck my times and then one car pulls in behind me and it’s the nice other feature and his wife who’s the boss and i’m making small talk and feeling small doing it, because since he’s published and makes a 2-home living that i must be in the wrong business or at least doing it the wrong way but then comes bertha’s ernie who shuffles in with a “howdy”, and then a “bertha won’t be here”, and the few of us, that is, everyone shuffles to the door and by now the crowd is 7, or 8 counting me and then we get the sweet tour and the place IS really cool but bertha’s in nebraska and all i can do is imagine her purple hair on shoulders, having never ever met her and then the other feature goes up first, after one scary open mike-er from a lady with religion, and a sister she’s gotta save, and the feature’s really dry, i mean really really dry and is going with some language that i think no-one’s ever spoken or maybe i’ve just never heard, because i’m simply missing everything, i mean every single word, which gets me to a wondering if my work that i have from all over my map will ever find treadwell and will ever go over, cause the room is so quiet and the other feature is so something and now he’s finally ending and ernie is now sleeping and the crowd’s about the same and still real small and now i’m up and starting and now i am real nervous, i mean really really nervous and i read what i brought and did what i do and not much was different that is everyone was quiet, i mean really really quiet and ernie was still sleeping though now the crowd had doubled and all seemed nice enough but still quiet as all hell and the applause was so punctual and the applause was so neat and then it was over and i made my few goodbyes and exchanged my few numbers and then got in my car for the drive now twice as long in the going as the coming and the blizzard was now fiercer and there wasn’t any traffic except for one who was really really slow, while way back in treadwell i’d left a few things that i wanted, like nothing that important but a hairbrush that i liked and a mug that i used but i was 10mins gone and the place was 10mins dark and the dog was nowhere lurking and now treadwell was done and i loved every minute.
Phillip X Levine is poetry editor for Chronogram magazine and president of the Woodstock Poetry Society.