The Other Side of the River

What exactly is happening. Why does what matters matter.

And who cares and who cares who cares.

Moonlight in dewy grass at three a.m., owls on the other side of the river. Do you know what night is because I know now what night is. 

Yet another cousin dying a hard death, refusing help, maybe not even remembering how to ask for help, and maybe - probably - just standing it because what else. 

In the sweaty kitchen at midnight my body begs me to break it - cut it - or do bad things to other people with it - and I sit trembling, bearing it, breathing through it, as thirty-one years ago Jesus promised would be best, and has so far kept his promise.

Beans and squash pushing through dusty garden soil. Swallows coming closer than I remember.

When you just plop down in the middle of the maze and say fuck it, let the Minotaur eat me, by which you really mean, fuck the maze-maker, may he choke on the bones of unforgiving birds. 

Trying to explain lust to Thérèse, surprised at how readily she gets and contextualizes it. Is there nothing a rosary won't encircle?

Coming to terms with misunderstanding Emily Dickinson, going back into Jack Gilbert for hopefully the last time.

Blue hills at dusk.

After fucking being almost always better than fucking, the softness after sharing what we are when we are naked making what we are in truth easier to welcome. 

We drive to Upper Highland Lake and walk around it twice talking about what it means to be married at such a late stage of the world and our bodies. I remember catching and killing trout, perch, pickerel, bass and pumpkinseeds.

There is so much for which to atone, it's like repentance all the way down.

Fireflies in the remaining hemlocks, chickens that just barely escape a passing dog's jaws. 

Some people think a miracle is when things work out but a miracle is when you realize things don't need to work out because you are beyond the reach of things.