Hunger is the Main Course

And what if hunger is the main course? In the days after Christmas rain fell, and the earth turned into a swamp. When the blind horse walks he tilts his head, steering in part by sound. What was day becomes night, as a hand becomes a fist, or opens to hold a hammer or another hand. The moon blurred by clouds, crows more confident than seems justified. The world the way it is, inarguably. The long shadow of Golgotha reaches us and we have to decide how to see it. Those who are called "dog," those who must not be. One never fully leaves the house in which they grew up but carries it with them, like a candle or a basket. My daughters' voices fill the wintry dusk, their dialogue finer than stars from which I cannot tear my eyes. I remember long walks after the others collapsed into bed, scriptured walls of the quarries one passes going down. "You never know" can be one of the answers. Something in me softens, something else sneaks out near dawn and does not come back for days. The problem is the old one of the storyteller dying to enter their own story. Cradle to grave is a familiar dance, one we shouldn't be quick to disdain. Beyond the witch, the grandmother, and beyond the grandmother, bears striding through the heavens, not knowing they are bears. I have only the most exultant means of describing you and it's not enough. What then?