The Cosmos that Way

Dark trucks before dawn rolling slowly up Main Street. Unfurling maple leaves, losing their jewelry essence in favor of something closer to a crinkly surface on which secret messages are scrawled, love notes from Jesus maybe, maybe just shades of green and red in late April sunlight which are themselves sufficient unto joy.   

If you say you are haunted, then you are haunted, and so we must perform an exorcism, which is less a religious ritual than a complex friendship lasting at least one lifetime. My heart hurts for the hemlocks, fifteen or so felled in a day without my consent (which was of course irrelevant on the human plane, unless you happen to know that I was recently appointed the Guardian Angel of Hemlock Trees in New England).

How I have always loved writing love letters, and always mentally edit the ones I receive, an unfairness - a self-centeredness - I am only now beginning to understand is problematic. Catkins skating across the fire pond's surface. Tell me about a walk that you remember, tell me about a walk about which you dream of taking.

In other news, I'm overeating again. We talk about all three kids while planting onions, fingers cold in wet soil, voices coming and going in winds that seem to never leave. What kind of problem does a sunflower have?

The river whispering at midnight, sharing secrets about love and happiness - that's what it sounds like, feels like, so that's what it is - and fuck off if you've got a problem with me being in dialogue with the cosmos that way. 

The bureau's surface includes a dozen or so rocks, headphones, two bibles, A Course in Miracles (FIP edition and Urtext), a dictionary, an English-to-Greek dictionary, an English-to-Latin dictionary, a two-volume edition of Shogun my kids gave me four Father's Days ago, a pen, two paintings by my youngest daughter (a seascape from when she was seven and a psychedelic flower garden from when she was eleven), my grandfather's broken rosary, a clipboard with teaching notes for a class on Walt Whitman from last semester, a bunch of guitar picks with doves on them, and emptiness, and now do you love me?

Wasps stepping sluggishly out of a hole in the window frame. Morning sun absent which makes us second guess our plans for garden work later. I will drive east along Route Nine for twenty minutes, I will arrive at a deep forest and enter it empty-handed, going all the way to the dog's grave to kneel in grief and confusion. 

The luminosity of certain mosses, the purple on the wings of female mallards, the bluish hue of fresh psilocybin. Falling-over mailboxes. I wonder are broken broken vows hence fixed?

All this order out of which we arise, seekers of the secret flame, lovers of the one male god left, disciples of the Goddess who reveals Herself in the luminosity of certain mosses, the purple on the wings - oh right, I said that part already, sorry.

Briefly stumbling happily through spring rain, forgetting everything, including especially prayer.