Only Little Boxes

Men who cannot write without muses. After all, what is apparent? The skies cloud over but not uniformly. It is midnight somewhere, and someone is haunted accordingly. 

Two months pass, three months without any serious writing - only these sentences, one following the other, like a carpenter who no longer builds houses but only little boxes. Mist rises off the lake, old ladies from Holyoke cast their lines in and smile when I walk past. There were dogs once, and now there are no dogs. Jessamine, a variant of Jasmine.

Between paragraphs, what? Reading through memories of those who lived longer than Abhishiktananda, thinking of what happened to the work of Thérèse after her death. Collapsing mirrors, one into the other. Let it rain indeed.

Folded ladders, empty watering buckets. I ask my son if he needs or has questions about condoms and he says "Dad for Christ's sake" to which I mentally reply "exactly, my son, exactly." Bawling lambs on dewy clover. Let us populate the stars if it is God's Will, and if it is not, then let us quietly fold up our tents and go. 

There are no prayers. Parts of the lawn die off, and it's okay. My mother calls, her voice higher than usual, as if she is unwinding in a perilous place, and my commitment to the Benedictine rules around travel waver. Oh forever, maybe longer.