When I was young and it would rain in the night I would drift to the attic spaces, the storm covering the sounds of my movements, and I would lie on a scratchy old blanket in a place so dark I could not see my own hands, letting the rhythms push me into sleep and dreams of travel, escape, ocean voyages, and treks across an empty North American wilderness. Usually I would travel alone. Sometimes I might be accompanied by my own visions of the saints we prayed to: St. Jerome offering me a ride on his Triumph motorcycle, St. Francis cooking in the ships galley, pouring hot coffee spiked with whisky. Once, at age 12, Mother Mary herself - providing ham and eggs in a colorless café on the Alberta prairie.

Ira Socol