Another Noose

Struggling up through watery depths in order to breathe again, standing on the edge of a cliff awaiting a stiff wind, star-gazing under cloud cover that shows no signs of abating. How and with whom shall I think about this body?

How we take our clothes off at night when we are tired and ready to sleep vs. how we took them off when we were young and hot and ready. Fourteen books on the bureau, my reading list through early May.

One chooses among many options without realizing it, commits to the one chosen as to a religion, else what is childhood for. The cows came up from the pasture to greet the little boy for whom their presence was a metaphysical condition related to God's mysterious love.

Luciferian pride begins to gleam through rips in the moral fabric of me. We are selves in part but not in sum.

One faces the classroom uncertainly, desiring to be loved yet unsure of their commitment to the requisite ideals, and thus risks a damaging exposure. Artists with a gift for self-promotion, artists whose work elides the self altogether.

Chickadees perch on nearby pines for all the world studying me as I pass. When I kneel I do so swiftly with efficiency and when I rise it is only because the other is sated and no longer needs me or any receptacle in a posture of submission and when I leave after it is in silent fury like a loaded gun that cannot die.

To call wordiness "given" is to create expectations and obligations where none naturally abide and this too is an error to be avoided. That diner in Vermont where we ate Saturday mornings, sharing each other's pancakes and coffee.

The old dog's grave is a mountain that I climb at least once a year. One enters the forest aware of what changes when one enters the forest, which includes the awareness that one cannot be aware of everything that changes when one enters the forest.

At bedtime we could barely speak owing to fatigue and stress yet at three a.m. were bound in a shared pocket of warmth in which something that does not love us was vanquished, if only temporarily. One takes their grandmother's tea cup outside and holds it over their head so it will fill with moonlight, determined to enact every possible ritual of grace.

We who were raised to gaze unflinchingly into the barrels of guns, to accept unconditionally the ruthlessness of the God of Jonathan Edwards, we for whom every death of an animal was another noose we were made to walk by before risking a fretful sleep. Abide with me now in the wreckage, console me in this vale of snot and tears.