Perhaps Our Finest Solace

Is it always late afternoon? I grew up in a world where there was never enough time and memory was a black hole that swallowed the living. The guns are gone but in another sense, the guns will never be gone, ever. We stacked tires down behind the barn, using them later to hold down canvas tarps protecting (poorly) the hay from rain, sometimes overturning them to look for snakes and worms. Death is not even an outcome, let alone an obstacle! How quietly Bronson Brook flows through the dingle, even in winter when I visit, a stranger now, albeit one with stories. Hawks and owls float over the pasture at all hours, eyeing the neighbors' lambs and chickens, settling on the broken maple, still and alert, as befits both royalty and hunters. We work through yet another version of the difficult conversation, arriving nowhere save gratitude for the other's nearness. Marriage at a late stage of the world is perhaps our finest solace? One combs through ancient texts in search of advice, finds nothing but the same old promises. How brief was the interval behind childhood and old age! I'm like a scarecrow who's never seen winter but still knows winter is coming.