A piebald duck, the Puzzle-maker, and your own bashful questing beast

There are hours that return to you after many years, sometimes in dreams.  These revenant hours linger through your morning shower ... a half-recalled turn of phrase, a tug in the heart, shapes of faces and emotions, a fog of sentiment that evaporates even as the mirror over the sink dries to reveal the man of the moment.  By the time you turn the key in the ignition and drop the stick into reverse, the hour is gone.

Unless someone has captured it somewhere on page, in the words that the Puzzle-maker himself might have invoked when he created that hour for you.  A ear that can discern those weird noises is a rare gift.

Bucky McMahon hears them, and his new (and first) collection Night Diver is that dream you forgot over the morning coffee.

I remember some of the pieces from their original run in the Tallahassee Democrat's Limelight section in McMahon's Barmadillo column.  The Friday Democrat was a treasure when the Barmadillo was out in the world and writing, something anticipated.  Bucky already covered it in the foreword, but I'll also say thank you to Mark and Zilpha and Janey for making that column happen.  As a young man (this was maybe 1990 ... I would have been 19), I read those columns and I saw a path.

There's a lot of good writing in here, much of it in the travel and adventure categories, a great deal of it from in and around Florida, and there is an illustrated dream journal.  Night Diver is eclectic and sublime.

The title of this post is taken from words that appear on page 187 of Night Diver in a piece called Lake Ella.  An hour walking around Lake Ella, while a cold front creeps over town.  We all forget important things, sometimes, in the circuits that we walk in our waking lives.  Thank God for those few who, in our march along the water's edge, can pick up the sound of the unaccented beat.

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