Far Enough Up the River

You would what, if you could? I learned early what one learns by studying envelopes.

 

Nothing magic, nothing mundane. Early lessons in the futility of acquisition, losses I was unable to manage alone.

 

She runs to meet the bus, unaware I am watching her, her blue coat bouncing behind her in ways that make me think of capes, heroes, conflicts that we need not fear will be resolved. So much of what we depend upon comes out of the sky – sunlight and rain, answers to prayers.

 

Going far enough up the river together to go down on you without being seen. There is no such thing as “amen.”

 

Sunlight decanting into Quinetucket, a brightness as I drive over it in Sunderland, remembering how Dad and I used to canoe long stretches of it, which I did not love. Pain is a symbol that something has become misaligned - cries out - in the depths of you, 

 

This is not the catastrophe for which we prepared! Jeremiah takes over cooking the meat, asserting something I was not allowed to assert, I step aside quietly, gratefully, writing in the other room while he works in the kitche, little poems for my father, letting him know it’s all okay, it’s all going to be okay.

For example, I am not actually in an open marriage with chickadees but I say so to emphasize the intensity of love, my willingness to follow wherever it leads. Overtures, Overton Windows, easy bake ovens.

 

Blunt knives are no good to anyone. We come back to the question of sheep, everybody groans, but we have not yet reached clarity and so the wise among us insist we make the inquiry again.

 

Bruises are not art Sean, please stop playing with that harmful idea. I remember confessing in the little kitchenette in the Worthington town hall where in those days the Catholics held mass, and I remember feeling the penitential prayers after were too easy, and I did not connect this to a kind God who forgave readily but to priests and other adults having no fucking clue about how dangerous and beautiful and all-powerful was our Lord.  

 

So much scuttled now, most of it travel-related. Mountain ranges that are my spine another way.