Deeper and Deeper into the Forest

Mid-morning, they say. Past abbreviations, vacations, all the way to bridges spanning tidal flats, stained black by stormy tides. There is no past, there is no future, only this. Flurries of snow on the back roof, high winds and more fence damage than we can figure out how to pay for. Loose sheep and other temptations to the ragged imprecision of metaphor. This jerry-rigged world, this blank how-to manual. Like that? The sentences do not weigh in yet remain given, like the idea of justice. Eagles circle the far hill, now and then dipping towards the river, and we watch without comment. Was it last summer or the summer before that I walked the river as night fell, deeper and deeper into the forest, thinking of a woman and later writing it, word by laborious word to share with her. More and more I am less amazed and simply present, gently but pleasantly surprised with the end of suffering. God, who has neither feet nor a sense of distance, does indeed take the last step. When we wait, want intensifies, and what we are here to learn clarifies to an exquisite degree. The egoic self is blown out of us, like dynamite blasting a tunnel through rock. Boundaries transgressed by bad-asses who actually do want what's best? Blue underwear that remembering weeks later leaves me breathless and hard. It's enough and not enough both, which all along was the clue I needed to stop looking, stop longing. And begin.