One undertakes not to be regulated by externals. Yet at 3 a.m. the stars cascade and owls call to one another, obviously satiated. Do you know the difference between wind in pine trees and wind in the pasture? We are not waking up so much as remembering that we are already awake.
A little field mouse pauses by the door, nibbling some crumb or seed there, then continues into the pantry. We cannot bear the grace that waits on the other side of the imaginary darkness. Though I do not know you, I know you. Driving home last night I was strangely thrilled, as if hearing your voice - most familiar of all voices - for the first time.
This writing? We make love gently, trying not to laugh, and later push the curtains aside to see if it has rained yet, or rained and stopped. It bears us, actually, and we are learning to accept that. The dog paused by a certain snowbank, and I paused too, as I do for all my companions, seen and unseen. The distant river in mid-March, a freshet.
What seems to happen happens in stages. I dreamed you insisted on a particular path - a trail that went South and down - when all I wanted was to walk beside you a while on the only path there is. Even now, train whistles, a sort of punctuation in this sentence that I live. A whiskey bottle, inside of which a lonesome song forever highlights the quintessential vowel.
The ladle of the big dipper upending its silky nothingness. We have stood here before, in love with each other, unafraid of what it means to die. In a sense, the caves of Lascaux always beckon. The only reckoning is our reckoning, again and again, as if.
No comments:
Post a Comment