The Clear Light of Fixable Sadness

Backyard goldenrod reaches higher than the fence, yellow blooms peeking at the neighbor's doomed hens. At the end of summer the sky widens and becomes an envelope into which mortality is pressed, its fragile petals decorating a letter few of us want to receive.

Friable earth in the shadow of headstones welcoming bulbs that may well live longer than we do. He means the cool dark of a zealot's heart, open but mapless, still but always moving.

A sad dance performed by old women whose sons are buried in another country. All afternoon slicing just-picked Jonagolds and drizzling maple syrup so that quart jar after quart jar of apple sauce might be stacked on basement shelves, a kind of hedge against the looming dark of winter.

At night I dream of her naked and in the morning awaken with an altered grasp of hunger. Knocks on the door echoed through the afternoon, each hour longer than the last, and yet we did not answer, because sometimes you can't.

Soon the brook will be too cold to swim in, and the mind will turn - regretfully or otherwise - to hunting deer and bear. When I think of you, I am at peace, and when I am at peace, I miss you, and when I miss you, I think of you in the clear light of fixable sadness.

She perceives in labor what is most profitable so that her lamp might not go out when night comes on. Guard your steps when you approach what you believe is the House of God.

Refusing an audience is often the only way to find the right word. M. asks if I want to buy her mule and I actually consider it, I actually picture it out in the forest dragging felled trees into the swale.

Sustained attention is its own gift in that one perceives at last that attention is all there is. We found Grandpa's farm journals - notes extending to the early twentieth century - buried in the attic, half of the pages chewed away by mice, and you said, "well, they live here too."

Spiritual growth and improvement - like all forms of becoming - are an illusion so shift your focus accordingly. Pancakes are never not a blessing, in the way that certain small kisses are never not welcome.

Beggars come and beggars go but what goes on forever? I mean, threats of rain mean nothing to the maker of umbrellas.