Alan Alda is starring in MASH in my dream
in a Halloween special based on It’s A Wonderful Life
except being MASH, and being a Halloween special
and being a dream of mine
it’s much darker than anything with Jimmy Stewart.
Alda, as Hawkeye, loved being someone else on Halloween night,
and deep into his home distillery
he has his own fever dream:
his life transforming into mine
jumping from his darker scenes
(a night alone at a Korean bar, a failed
hand surgery, snippets of sick laughter)
to the happier scenes from mine
(my dogs running on the hills next to Hudson Bay,
my students posing for each other’s photographs
as they merrily forget their assignments)
part of me wants to scream at the screen
“It’s not like this! My life has its failures
and oh God does it have some lonely nights”
but I just let him have his dream,
he’ll figure it out in time.

SIMON BUD WAKE is a high school teacher who splits his time between Montreal and Inukjuak Quebec, which is a fly-in-only Inuit village. Simon is a graduate of Concordia’s creative writing program, and is currently doing his masters in education at McGill. He is working on his first book of poetry about fatherhood and his experience in the north.

Copyright © 2018 by Simon Bud Wake. All rights reserved.