The Secret to Abundance

What I learned about hunting from my father, which haunts me to this day. Shirts I wear, shirts I don't. I promised I'd be here always and I will be, I just didn't think it meant being so alone. Moss on rocks, a little off the river.

Planning a drive to Mansfield to the cemetery, maybe pushing an hour east to the sea, who knows, but once again nobody will travel with me. Drawing the curtains, something shamed in me whispering "tighter." When I was twenty-three I learned I didn't know how to talk to people, it took a long time to fix that. In the name of the father, as if there were any other way.

Dying patches of grass. Starlings nesting in the hollows of the apple tree. Near dusk a storm comes down the valley, and we sit by the horses waiting on it. Wedding bands, wedding bands. 

I see myself sometimes as a monster constructed by others, subject to countless banishments, most of which are deserved, good for the world, et cetera. And the sea rolls in, and the sea rolls out. Waking to moonlight on the floor - knowing again the secret to abundance is gratitude for what is given that you cannot possess and so cannot spend. Yes, we get it, God is disappointed with us, what else is new.

Lilies leaning out from the sideyard crabapple. "You're not perfect, you know," I tell Chrisoula who says quietly in reply, "no but sometimes you make me feel like I could be, and I love you for that." Buddha saves me a little always, let me not forget this. Bean wraps with ice cold lemonade, and after a bowl of raspberries sprinkled with sugar and lime.