A New Imperative

Once more into the breach, this time without so much drama. I slip into the bathroom, bring up this or that photo of her, and jack off breathlessly. Cars roll by, slowing by the post office where folks coming in and out stand too close to the street talking. Vespers and lauds, et cetera.

Winter. Work pants slung over the ladderback chair. Remember when you actually knew what was enough?

Remember when Lake Champlain was visible through a west-facing window, a blue glint of it, and how it comforted you then, and does still.

The neighbors putting out eggs for sale, their chickens not allowed to leave the shed, which chafes a little, though who am I say. Deer cross the road at dusk, bounding between clumps of bittersweet, disappearing. Less light, less love.

Beauty is a form of complexity to me, which I rarely admit to, because I'm exhausted (and a little bored) with arguments that beauty is simplicity.

Scuffing through fallen maple leaves.

Rain-washed quartz.

My heart shifts, adapts to the new tenor, and otherwise eschews mirrors. For days the familiar mode has not worked, and so letting go becomes a new imperative. 

We unwrap what was carefully wrapped.

We are conditioned to place conditions: where is healing in this?

The nearly-full moon in bowers of November cloud, unseasonal warmth allowing dreams of her to float like a cephalopod through green seas in my skull.

I, too, am well-pleased, and see no reason to forego a Passover visit to Jerusalem.