No More Dogs in this Life

Honeysuckle blossoms floating in rain water pooled in the hoof prints of passing deer, on which I relied for far too long. The word “ridge” came up a lot, to this day I’m averse to it. You cannot escape Easter, thank Christ.

 

Who knows you best, would you say? My grandmother’s collection of salt and pepper shakers, half a dozen of which are on shelves in our kitchen, 1930s kitsch basically, which I cannot resist. Low ceilings in old houses, water-marked tiles.

 

I remember Dad falling asleep a few times while I drove him around southern Vermont at the end, how my breathing changed accordingly, how carefully I sipped my coffee. There will be no more dogs in this life, it is decreed and accepted, om shanti shanti shanti. Truth is neither near nor far, which oddly complicates our recognition of it.

 

Complex burial plans. It took me a long time to realize that letting go of my family was not the end of the world. Daughters who want no protection, the opposite actually, i.e., need you to be a man in ways you are yet learning to be, even at this late and getting later juncture.

 

Sentences saved my life. I cannot hear her voice anymore nor precisely see her face, and I am puzzled by this. Reminder that the absence of absence is a kind of presence, and that presence is a kind of emptiness.

 

Lessons learned in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Buildings constructed mostly of cement, how it feels to be inside them. Venus due South, Satan begging for another chance, wanting him to have it but knowing it is not mine to grant.

 

I was happy climbing trees but not happiest, that was reserved for rivers and the long walks through the forest to reach them. Border disputes, the whole reason we have to use the word “soul” at all.