Anything with Roots

Jasper comes by on Sunday with two six-packs of Narragansett and we drink to our fathers to just shy of drunk. His point is that why one apologizes is more important than what one apologizes for, which makes me feel like somebody somewhere is getting away with something. The front porch in early February at dusk, cars going slowly up and down Main Street, house lights blinking on both west and east, switching from one foot to the other to keep the blood flowing. How much one expects to be elided by et cetera! And the moment as a teen-ager when you realized that Latin and Greek mattered, that abbreviations were a form of sloppy thinking, and women a complexity worth giving attention to. Out back the horses whinny, aware that we're out and wondering why we're not "out back." I confide my intention to purchase a single rose bush and plant it by the apple trees, and confide too my reluctance to put down anything with roots. Stars come out and wind begins and temperatures in our shared valley drop. I've done things I wish I hadn't, not all of which were bad. Is it dark where you are too?