Given to Words

I fell to sleep remembering the grape arbor where we buried calves, the dark blue shadows, and how light seemed not to enter. Gardens are happy places, as are open fields, as are trails through the forest. One longs to follow moose and so does but always ends up at that place where they cannot follow any longer because to do so would be to become a moose and so turns back. We are not our lovers, nor what we read.

The dirt road roughly tracked the brook where for years I fished alone, telling myself stories, fertilizing imagination. Do you remember the photographs I mailed you? A certain sorrow attends all that one does, and at last one begins to see that it is negotiable, perhaps necessarily so. A world view is not the world yet we think it is and that is the whole problem.

In a way, all correspondence is public (says the man for whom all secrets are in writing). Most of the trees to which I pay attention are now bare and have turned to face north. The moon's favorite instrument is a mandolin, possibly a fiddle. Also, as I told A. and N. yesterday, one of the laws by which I live is "be sure you have a dog."

The morning given to words and chores. Two hours in a lawyer's office only to learn again that dying is the easy part. Roads do go hither and yon in such a way that eventually you learn all that matters is you walk one. Winter is for putting up wood, harvesting sap, icy clarity and life-changing syllables from strangers.

The water bearer's arms have been empty a long time. Who bends toward service teaches, regardless of what we call it after. In late fall, I can at last sleep beneath piled blankets, a joy left over from childhood. And you, always you.