To Treasure Island for a wardrobe fitting before the funeral cortège in Season 4 of Man in the High Castle

​

—with a line by Philip K. Dick
I had no lines, but got along 
with the costume designer who dressed
me as an officer’s wife and decided 
I should wear the vintage black tulle
and satin whimsy hat perhaps to make
up for the black pumps that were not
designed for comfort, and since I was
a background actor in an alternate 
history, what was the harm in unlearning
who won which war as long as 
my grandmother didn’t turn in her grave
because I don’t think she ever got over
what she had to do in the years before
liberation. Looking in the mirror
         

     in a retro skirt suit, I thought I saw
a ghost. But it is 2018 
in the real world, and Treasure Island
is a boneyard, a place for old longings
where the only ghosts are long-gone lady 
beetles and irradiated moths. Steel 
shipping containers sit atop the bones 
of a walled city, and there’s a white 
retriever with a six-pound lump 
on his belly and the sight of him,
I know, will forever haunt me. 
Here we are where the World’s Fair was,
and I wonder what we were before 
we were this, quarried rock that bloomed 

 

(Continued)