Reaching the Desert You Promise

At three a.m. you wake up a suspect but ten minutes later the wild stars and frigid air insist you are held and beloved. How grateful I am for tea on mornings when the coffee grounds spill to the floor. When I cry, I cry hard, and the months that pass when I don't, well, what can you do but what you can do? There is a sense now that some lovely vista will remain unreached, some critical insight go undiscovered. Yet when you know you don't know, you basically know, right? Or am I only being clever? Coming back from teaching last night I pulled over to watch a bull moose trot north along the road, eventually ducking into a little clearing below K.'s house. How big and glorious they are in thinning moonlight! How shaggy as the year turns winter! And a dry snow spat from unseen clouds, hissing a little on the driveway when I pulled in, tired and angry and scared, despite the great Love of which I am mostly now aware. It turns out that saying what you don't want to say isn't the answer either although it does move you in a helpful direction. I love you in ways for which I am just beginning to be thankful. Yet I still stagger through sleep in a hurry to reach the other other side (repetition intended!), a habit that I refuse to give up, even though it doesn't really serve. I meant to write "the same old dream of mail" but snakes - who, like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, are a symbol of death in the maw of the hungry Other (for I am terrified of being eaten above all other fears) - abound, and so. Thank you Meister Eckhart for going silent at a critical moment. I chose the wordy - not the religious - life, and am only now reaching the desert you promise I will not die in.