A Plastic Emphasis

A last swallow of tea. Hills to the south emerge from dense clouds, morning rain fades, and I walk two houses down to apologize for Friday night's outburst. We have to help, and we have to allow ourselves to be helped, or is that just the way we were told we had to say it.

One begins to sense the presence of Lucifer, especially over the first cup of coffee in pre-dawn darkness. Muddy snowbanks seep into the road, forcing traffic to go slower and pull to the side. We share but not happily and bad things happen.

An early insistence that ethics was always situational, as if. Half a century passes with nothing to show but glossy metaphysics and a plastic emphasis on joy. Ferrying hay to the horses at dawn, surprised when they linger looking at me rather than going on to eat.

A tea cup filled with moonlight. Four a.m. or so waking from a dream of my mother demonstrating compassion for her own mother at a picnic table, a family reunion of some kind, a late afternoon full of blank faces and unarticulated expectations, and thus the day becomes a long slog through shitty applications of intellect and fake smiles. Submission, always submission.

Exhausted by caring for sick children we can barely face one another in the kitchen at breakfast. Who cares how frozen apple slices fare in winter pie? Psilocybin-fueled escape fantasies dominate now.

Yet immortality remains a theme, one we are bound to explore. Mutual recognition eschewing equality? We who were given the sky but opted instead for low pastures and cows, a happiness that in retrospect was a bitter settlement enabled by already-dying fathers.

Buddha chokes saying grace at the table and some of us thump his broad back and some of us just laugh. The Man without Shoes hoards shoes, seduces the cobbler's daughter without considering her own needs, and does not pray the way he tells you that he prays and really - I mean really - can you say you are surprised?