Peace with Horses

Gray skies, low clouds where the valley turns toward us. In the forest yesterday off Kinnebrook Road a deer stood in shadows not moving. Remember as a child wondering where the rivers went and why they didn't run out of water? Well, we are all travelers.

Again facing the penumbra of a woman's anger, that fierce light, that vivid psychological corona. Some mysteries do not allow clues, merely exist as invitations to ask better questions. Books read to pieces, that life. Last of the peonies, is this how it ends. 

Better metaphors only sometimes help. At dawn the birds are oddly muted, as if some shared sorrow were upon the earth. Church-goers making sure you know they're going to church. There is no such thing as a secret, this is the secret to salvation.

We make love at night for once, in bed for once, loneliness breaking the way waves break along rocky coasts. Long walks past the fairgrounds, listening to crows. At a late juncture making peace with horses, is there any other way. Observing oneself falling.

Are we, in the end or at the beginning, love, because it sure doesn't feel that way here in the middle. Toad resting in the shade cast by sunflowers. Jasper asks what's next and I can't say, I never can, and he points out mildly that may be part of the problem. My daughters teach me a new story, such difficult beauty, this godless - this grace-filled - mercy.