A Drive, A Familiar One

The dim somehow grainy call of an owl up north feels brotherly in all this rain. Your sums are my painful division. Rippled glass, garter snakes, a rusty hoe in the forest.

The woman who praised my writing - and then spoke movingly of the necessity for unconditional love - appeared in my dream to be leading someone I needed away from me. Pencils, pine boughs, children rising out of the lake. Later a drive, a familiar one.

The sodden Amish bonnet found after a wind storm opened a slew of possibilities. Coffee itself is a miracle. Each sentence can be said to have a perigee, if you want to be that way.

He said he couldn't catch a break even though the air was full of them. A forty year old blue plastic rosary that nobody can say enough about. I wrote conversions when I meant convergences.

There's something about feral goats, isn't there? Swatting flies near the pine trees, discussing where to build the fire, while everybody else was out swimming. Protective father energy satisfies what new imperative?

Swallows are sometimes mistaken for bats. Arterial blood mixed with motor oil. Dancing awkwardly but not unhappily in this moonlight.

I lied about that for a long time. It felt like clothes coming off, like swimming naked in a quarry, or it felt like finally seeing the stars come out after how many nights of rain.