If You Tell Me We are Going Home

Rain falls overnight, turning the maple trees dull green and early orange, and all of a sudden all the work in the garden goes mostly away. This interior graveyard forever mocking my tentative whistling. Whose hands are empty, whose throat is full of prayer. Three a.m. is mostly quiet save for the river, on the far side of which are owly hills on the far side of which Emily Dickinson once lived and wrote (and was buried when she died). Leaving the hay loft a moth brushes my cheek and I realize it's been months since I cried. A day that passes without news, good or bad, is a good day, or so one decides. Hidden keys, lost maps. If you tell me we are going home, then I am going to tell myself a story that involves spiritual light, a little town in Vermont I still don't know the name of, and a warm blanket for December into January. When I quit drinking my life changed, exactly as if an exorcism had successfully purged my soul of a demon. Folded quilts, drowsy cats? Jesus is a collage, a collaboration, and thus a relationship which, if you are so inclined, requires sustained attention to function well. Fear of dying becoming easier to confront at this late - and getting later - juncture because of the late and getting later juncture. I had some thoughts and put them down - did you happen to notice where?