The Only Here There Is

One perceives a watery landscape, not silver so much as gray, and talk in the house grows quiet as well. A day for swans, a day for building replicas of nineteenth century whalers in glass bottles (tinted green). An interior alarm sounds again, as it has been for almost a month now, and I stumble for the corner chair to give attention thusly. It is time to get serious.

More serious? Living room stacked with books to avoid the basement deluge reminds me how much poetry and theory I've read over the years. Where do we go when we die is not an unimportant question though one learns in time the answer is not as interesting as originally thought. One writes happily through their conflicted feelings about eternity and arrives at the only here there is.

We pile ripe pears in a white ceramic bowl, scoop beet hummus with homemade crackers, and drink sweet tea in bed. For a couple bent on simplicity we are oddly luxurious with socks. A profluence of deer mistaken for shadows? I drive slowly as if trying to recapture a previous life's wagon ride.

Midnight is a frame of mind. Sri Aurobindo's notion - here somewhat paraphrased - of God as continent (i.e., container) solves a lot of problems, not the least of which was Emily Dickinson's odd - even strangled - perception of architecture specifically and space generally. The dog gets up, turns in a circle that leaves her a little closer to me, then curls up tighter, a comfort. Finally I appreciate Gilbert's insight re: "And it dwindled away into definitions."

One approaches God on their knees only to learn (after lifetimes maybe) they have no knees and God wasn't anywhere anyway but where they always were. I remember many years ago telling Jeremiah a long and complex adventure story at bedtime, one that went on for almost a year with all sorts of narrative threads and directions, until one night we agreed to arrive at its end, and did, and he burst into tears then and remained inconsolable for days, even when I tried to revive the story, because he understood better than I that you can't go back into what is over, what is ended. Rose petals swim in the vase on the mantel, a loveliness I return to almost hourly. Here comes one day, now one day is here.