A Flawless God-lit Landscape

North now. Scarecrows tilted in hard winds. At dawn shadows of the marigolds reach the shadows of the sunflower stalks. 

And begin.

Driving slower than usual, rehearsing something that my grandmother approves of on behalf of angels who appear to me now with increasing regularity. Melted crayons. Slow-roasted pork. We take tea to the gazebo and sit through dusk, now and then chatting with passers-by, as if a difficult thing were suddenly not. 

Smoke rising off local chimneys. They are not ghosts but nor are they human. A sound water makes that pleases us, a light within that consumes all signifiers. A dream of darkness in which snow falls, each cool flake whispering a secret origin story.

Sword-swallowers, glass-eaters, women with beards and children with only passing ideas about who their parents are. Welcome to the Kingdom of the Bereft. 

Mountains on the summits of which I've kissed a girl. The silent choir, the blue light in my throat illuminating a world.

The Connecticut River a blue braid forever bisecting the wilderness, a seam in a flawless God-lit landscape. Not chaos so much as disorder, driven in part by an internal sense of futility, passivity. Would you like to read a book I think will help?

All the ones who with us wait for a grace the forsaken insist on receiving by degrees.