Despite My Relative Nearness

Up past midnight reading Einstein, one eye on the moon. I've lost count of all the years that have passed now without whiskey, not to mention the stories I tell in which I still hit the bottle hard. Well, maybe holiness is what we do, not what we say. Francis de Sales proclaims a loving God, which makes me happy for most of the hours I'm awake. Chrisoula waves off a proposed drive through Vermont, which makes sense more or less, but my blood remains in its Go North boil. Clean the garage, rake half the lawn, write a few poems, look again at Einstein, especially where he references Schopenhauer. "A man can do as he will, but not will as he will." It must mean something, but what? The days pass for which I am never not grateful, as I am grateful too for the grackle on the back fence, preening calmly, despite my relative nearness. Every fall I wait for that night when geese can be seen flying in frosty moonlight but it seems this year it won't happen. Or happened but I didn't see. It's okay. There's ponds the bottoms of which I still haven't reached, there's dreams that keep occurring, as if something inside me yet begs to be known. Begs to be let go? I take my coffee and study the far field, itself a study in brown. What we can't say haunts us, while what we won't say remains - for now - redemptive.