Maybe I was Lonelier

I always knew death was coming. There were bluets everywhere until there were not, and even then the future remained viable. Remember walking and pausing in the middle of the tracks, knowing you stood where not so long before a moose had stood.

Owls watching us at a distance.

One studies evil and also errors that led not to evil but could have, and thus ends up a tarnished optimist. Grace is a folded blanket where you need it most. Snow falls in the gaping wounds of my heart, bells ringing in a muffled way, indicating distances we cannot be assured of crossing.

Making her come, both hands on her thighs, heart racing after, striated moonlight falling across our naked bodies propped against the headboard. Hot buttered rum, gin and tonics, especially those giant ones they served in Burlington, when the future remained mostly invisible.

One falls a long way, blood falling from both wrists, only to learn they can fly, not unlike bats fly, diving and tucking in the most livid twilight ever. 

We are episodic. Tossed aside?

Flowers in the moonlight, that old charm, the witches coming down off the tree tops to sing the old songs for you. Fire does not forget itself, even when it dies.

Getting wasted beside fires on the shore of Lake Champlain, playing Johnny Cash songs, Hank Williams and Ernie Tubbs, everybody listening, mostly nobody interested in Leonard Cohen, which with Dylan was all I listened to or cared about, so maybe I was lonelier than any of them could say.

We are back in Cambridge! Lights flash in the room - blue squares bright and metallic - like something from the mid-eighties I mostly can no longer remember.

To Wordsworth all I can say is "yes and no." "You look like a rootless man who needs a friend," said the potato. 

How precious our unity, how staggering the obligation.