So Near I Cannot Breathe

Moonlight on the living room floor. Three a.m., coughing through the rosary prayer. Thunderheads bunching near the valley's crest. Neither this nor any other horizon.

The sentence as a way of learning how to see. Old-time tractors. Gathering near the fire pit at dusk, horses curious, beer wedged between Tom's knees tuning his mandolin, Chrisoula holding a joint to my lips while I stir the flames, moon rising. In those days we carried knives everywhere, you never knew.

The silver belly of dead trout just before they are gutted. I was not allowed to approach horses, nobody wants to talk about this, maybe it was a dream. Writing at the fair the day before it opens, Fionnghuala working on her entries. Light winds, first maples changing, may I never forget to be grateful.

I studied fatherhood a long time before that door actually opened. Plans to raise gladioli and hyancinths next spring, everybody confused because you can't eat them, but the bees can, and the hummingbirds. What we cannot recognize from any distance. Fumbling through the dialogue as usual.

She sits on the bed's edge, back to me, so near I cannot breathe. Horse-drawn. The well was up from the river, there were willow trees in the distance, the conversation ran to hard extremes. Being out of time at last.