In the Creases Now

So I have to make peace with Gordon Lightfoot now? 

Islands in my dreams, double moons and books about how to talk to dolphins.

The hemlocks are dying, I cannot let the hemlocks die, whole nights are given to the prayer this dilemma  makes me pray.

Kneeling to see how waves don't roll back so much as sink into sand.

I was in my forties before I could allow myself to own a rock tumbler, no wait, that's a lie, I was in my mid-thirties.

What was it Oscar Wilde said about sex? 

Tri-syllabic words with "l" sounds in them, a nontrivial part of the reason I married Chrisoula, which she knows and is not scared of.

This is my way of telling you everything is okay, okay?

The blind horse turns his head when I approach and because my heart is sick I go to him and he lets me rest against his neck.

Winter mist, that specific way of encountering the Lord which arose in childhood around the time Dad was trying to raise sheep.

Record albums lined up on the floor along the wall.

Wine on the table, moon in the open window beyond.

Heaven opens.

What is after the light?

Jesus speaks quietly in the bedroom as I write, gazing east where the Westfield passes between hills towards Northampton, saying over and over "there is nothing to choose."

Driving to Williamsburg for gas, remembering that moment as a child driving through with Dad, neither of us speaking, realizing I was going to hurt for the rest of my life and maybe longer.

Dust in the creases now so we have to figure it out, what we are doing in love.

I slashed my wrists with a pocket knife in my early twenties at a party arguing I wasn't scared of death, it felt perfectly reasonable but it scared the shit out of everybody, it basically ruined the whole night, to this day folks still say to me "Jesus Christ, what were you thinking?"

What curls up as it rests in us, so happy.

Oh Christ, the dogs, where are they.