Storms Come First

After midnight storms come, first on blue winds whose layers undulate like unfurling banners, and then in bursts of lightening that hurt my skull. One pads quietly here and there, closing windows, admiring the distant luminous Sanskrit of fireflies. I remember long ago God saying "you want too much and don't know what you want."

So the Connecticut River continues to flow through Emily Dickinson's valley, so the eagles pass high overhead, like the thoughts that evolve after reading a fine sentence. The last of last year's tomato sauce on eggplant and basil, sprinkled with oregano smuggled in from Greece. I am working out a theory of kisses as spiritual landscapes and am unaware of anyone else in the field.

I mean low New England hills rolling gently east as the sun sets and how much larger any landscape grows when one need not circumscribe it with words. Dreams in which she says quietly after, "I did not think you would respond." For many years there was a guitar buried in my shoulder, and there is still a bottle somewhere on which my name is carved.

Well, we are all dreaming of trains these days, we are all imagining the promise of the interstate. One discovers a field of buttercups and briefly remembers a wordless joy. What if last and first are the same?

Her letters arrive at dusk usually and I don't read all of them, but the ones I do read make me sad, aware as I am now of how much must go unsaid. We stopped at Watts Brook to watch trout dart through muddy shallows, and when we went on my feet hurt. Where the road ends it grows dark and we push on or turn back and thunder attends our decision.

Blunders offend all imprecision? Always be asking what you can offer, and then offer it for Christ's sake. Philip Kapleau said - I remember sharing this with Dan during one of our last conversations - "confess your bad deeds and forget your good ones."

Is this what you want? My fury, my whistle, my kettle full of rain.