Parted Just A Little

Four a.m. is the stillness that receives me in (order to empty me (of me)). Or something like that. I could ramble all morning if she'd let me. Each exhalation is a tide falling away and yet remains welcoming, which is exactly the mystery I long ago resolved to solve. Coffee, not tea, and candles instead of the overhead, and curtains parted just a little so one or two stars remain visible. The tractor metaphor is clumsy because it implies there is something to fix. I am not trying to fix anything because there is nothing to fix, but there is something to see. Earlier, in the moist fields behind the old homestead, a sort of mist rising from punky snow, and a warm bellows coming up out of the cattail, I saw it. It is always there but we are very insistent on the prerogative of narrative-as-self, which functions as both shield and a veil. Also, we are very attached to the body's eyes, which are a mansion when a cottage is all one really needs. A distance that is not neglectful is the closest I can get to what you learn in your sojourns outside time. I wake to write, and write to awaken, and so the words are there. Well, they are always there, which is an answer if at this late juncture you want one.