Subsequent Deepening

It's cold at Ascutney's summit so we don't linger, but a day later the familiar monadnock surfaces in all our bodies, in ways that remind us we are related and yet apart but here, right here. Always when I am discouraged with the state of raspberry bushes they suddenly exercise a prolific resurgence as if witnessing unto a forgiving God. There is the waxing crescent moon, the same color as the many clouds drifting roughly north to south, together reminiscent of chalk. The meadow discourages the neighbor's wandering chickens, a perfectly refulgent boundary protecting the garden, and an unexpected happiness. Cabbage leaves turn soft yellow and lay down in the heat, a garter snake slithers away when I upend gathered deadfall, and one is beholden - perhaps it was always thus, and will always thusly be - to traffic sounds at a distance, as if the highway longs for a certain traveler and won't be otherwise satisfied. Days pass and we study the outdoor oven, reflecting on another's labor and intentions so deeply at odds with our own, going slowly in the direction of a decision we know they wouldn't make. A subsequent deepening included the realization that there was fear, yet the specific incidents of it were like curtains which cause neither light nor darkness though to the uninitiated they appear to, and with that, suddenly, the specific incidents of everything (love, fear, joy, guilt, anger, play etc.) ceased to matter, though not to exist. Thus gassho, thus gassho rei. We plant morning glories in a rotting log, talking about natural patterns of seed dispersion, and how the desire to sit in on one of Husserl's lectures has made me forget all about sitting in on one of Tara Singh's. Crushed turtles, fallen dragonflies. After dinner we held hands briefly, and briefly I cried, overwhelmed by loss and its many demands, and so you took me to the bridge on the road between hills where we gazed for a moment into the river that reflected us yet never ceased to flow, and when you knew I knew it was okay, that it was more than okay, we walked home and I wrote you this. This this.