I TURN HOME

I TURN HOME...

“Is that the wind?” I asked from the north end of Williston State College’s drawing room. “Yes” Caitlin said as she modeled in repose for the monthly figure-drawing session as it beat the metal-on-metal Morton building housing the university’s art department. “It’s so loud” I said, “is it raining too?” “No” she said, “if it were raining it’d be louder.” We continued capturing Caitlin’s long n’ lithe profile in a semi-circle as wind howled against the tin can. “I hope my new roof isn’t this loud” Daphne said from the cresent-shaped easels. “Is it metal?” Kathy asked. “Yes” Daphne said. We all grimaced silently as the Short-Grass-Prairie wind ripped across us. “Lino calls it ‘The Marching Army’” Caitlin said. “No kiddin’” I said, “sounds like Genghis Khan crossing Eurasia.”

We sketched in silence through poses as the wind clanked our rectangle-dwelling into submission. The wind stopped and it got silent with the sound being our four pencils scribbling. After a moment of reprieve Caitlin said “It makes me nervous when it gets like this...” “Right” I said, “calm before the storm.” But the rain never came remaining motionless. We doodled in silence until breaking at twilight with sunrays penetrating the Step-Plains east of Williston in a kaleidoscope of gradation.

I Chevy’d home to the laboratory past the giant, docile American flag looming above Williams County Courthouse with a Badlands rendition of Dalton Trumbo’s verse from Kubrick’s “Spartacus” on my lips —

“When the blazing sun hangs low in the western sky. When the ‘squitos buzz in the Missouri no more, when Lake Sakakawea sleeps like a maiden at rest, when twilight touches the shape of the wandering earth and the wind dies away in The Bakken...I turn home. Through blue shadows and purple woods, I turn home. To Mamma Mia! who bore me and step-daddy who taught me. Long ago, long ago, long ago. Alone am I now lost and alone in a far, wide, wandering world. Yet still, when the sun hangs low, when Bird-Woman sleeps, when twilight touches the earth and the wind dies away...I turn home.”