(from) THE BIRTH OF THE LONE RANGER |
But when the pewter-plate moon rises over the flat hills of Massachusetts, and the witches of Puritanism ride, he is a were-baby who dreams in his crib of black masks, white hats, silver guns, an Indian horseman silhouetted against an ochre Western moon, escape to the west on a Great White Motorcycle not even yet conceived, a fair young woman in gingham and bonnet spinning at her wheel, and of children and babies like himself everywhere.
His mother puts a coverlet over his cradle so, in her psychosis, she will not see him. There are holes in it, so the infant may barely breathe. But, when that witches moon rises over the Commonwealth and plays through the window and onto the cradle, the shadow of the mask is already graven on the face of the neonate Lone Ranger, unbeknownst to his mother.
copyright 2004
Steve
Goldman |