Haunted by Self-Generated Concepts

We made cowboy coffee in Dublin and I learned a certain bitterness. Tufts of grass in which gray mice rest, appearing pensive, unsure. Chrisoula calls them "a sea now," my violets, and I beam inwardly, as if I've swallowed too much sun. 

We are waiting on blue flag, we are surprised by tulips - four of them - jutting up along the front porch. No more notes from Santa, a writing project I had never anticipated caring about. Frisbees that no longer fly. We agree that Saturday is a hard day to figure out the morning of. We are "over" coffee.

Here in the envelope things are getting hot, said no letter ever. Yellow linen pants which I wash by hand, and drape over the unblossoming lilac bush to dry, and then wear for weeks on end around the house, happier than I want to say. I call them poems but they're more like notes or lists, obligatory except when they're not. On the drive to Belchertown we talk about the kids, her uncompromised moral compass, and what it means to be haunted by self-generated concepts. Allow everything, resist nothing?

A sense of loneliness pervades, a consequence of not fully embracing one's calling to live a certain way perhaps. We have parents and they teach us how to use certain tools - guns, say, or typewriters - and other tools we have to learn ourselves or live without. 

I mean lonesome when driving long distances. One's father's grave beckons in ways which make visiting non-negotiable, which, big surprise. Fast food on the highway, washed down with tepid coffee. Greek icons in the bedroom, a crucifix replacing the clay Buddha who now rests outside near the violets.

I can still see all those turtles surfacing - loving us loving us at Fitzgerald Pond - and I pray I might see them forever.