The sound a shovel makes at the driveway's edge. When I look up, low-hanging clouds move quickly north. Rabbit tracks and a little further, frozen fox scat. This life, this way.
One continues with reheated coffee, poured in darkness, and silent prayer in a familiar corner. Gretel is the only character in that story who really changes, at least in the versions I prefer. She writes steadily, like an apple strengthening its hold on the bough. We are all in motion, always.
Coming back up the hill I smelled cinnamon amidst wood smoke and stopped, taken back to an ancient kitchen, amazed. A little light is often sufficient. The dog paces back and forth, her life an intensity I can barely imagine. What happens in Austin, stays in Austin.
Or so I say, composing the lyrics as I go, each street corner a new stage. Received in Ireland but as ever moving on. Creativity is not product but process, and one has to give up everything to know it. Dimly, one senses she has finally left, and so rises to begin at last the work.
Last week, cutting wood in the forest, I thought about my grandfathers, and wondered what I would say to them now if I could. Evolution is a good idea, a helpful one. We sit on maple stumps, gulping hot tea, observing the moose observing us. Who taps at my window, who is calling by and by?
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