Carry the Yes

Heavy rain at 2 a.m. through which I dozed, reaching for blankets Chrisoula had gathered about her, our ongoing struggle to be warm or cold together. The hospital was quiet, which made sense for a Saturday afternoon, but then I realized it was Friday and so the quiet was . . .  distressing. We talked about how you don't make any big decisions when it happens, you just let everything settle. The big goodbye elongates, becomes this.

Plan a visit for October? I always laugh at myself, especially when I drag the zafu out of its corner and perch on it like the cocky know-it-all I can't quite seem to get rid of. The wind from last night's storm remains, the tomatoes are doing a sort of dance in the sunlight, and the upper room where I write is cool and smells faintly like honeysuckle. Unpacking I found the wooden goose we bought in Chester, Vermont, the one I had admired for years and you finally said, fine, buy it, and I did and here it is, on a shelf next to Hayden Carruth.

You can be happy, just don't worry about what happens. The challenge of teaching arising again, the desire to do it, and the sundry resistances thereto. Am I a tease? I can only say yes to what's right in front of me, it's always been that way, it's why I'm such a terrible planner.

The blue jay works a bit like a hammer, reminding me I promised Chrisoula I'd stake the rest of the tomatoes, but I'm tired from traveling and visiting and worrying, and mostly sit with my books and my writing, not in a work way but in another way. Fionnghuala asks why I am so obsessed with colored glass and prisms and I tell her honestly that when I was little that was where I saw God all the time and when I'm not to full of myself and my big wordy brain sometimes still do. We were on the stairs nobody used, touching, and she asked breathily what my wife would say and I could neither answer nor stop. What we don't face is forever facing us, begging to be recognized - remembered - allowed its place in the prismatic lovelily whole.

But why are sentences so pleasing still? Honestly if you are still there in the writing - if there is still a writer writing - then that's the work, that's what needs to be written. Blossoming lilies all along the pond, so much so one's breath catches. And what if she does visit - if she does carry the yes those many miles - what then?