What to Make with a Body

Always the belief that something was missing. Later the unanswerable question what do you lack. And then this stillness, both terrible and beautiful. 

What is haunted, what is no longer.

Icicles melting on the back porch roof, cardinals preening in the side yard lilac. 

For a long time I thought that knowing something was missing meant it was here in the form of knowledge which I possessed and could use but the error now is clear. 

We made love under apple trees at the end of summer, under the watchful eyes of the blind Appaloosa our daughter serves. I am warmed by this in early winter. 

Bronson brook flowed through a dark forest, cool and damp. Even in hottest summer it was hard to make or sustain a fire. 

I'm confused about fathers again but don't worry, it's good to have something familiar to write about. It's not a crisis, not knowing what to make with a body, this or any other.

Upper Highland Lake, given. Fitzgerald Pond where we walked together to the Country of Turtles, given. 

The Country of Turtles, given.

Owls in winter alone in the deep forest, given.

Learning what comes after fear, given. After what the dogs knew, after what the calf saw, tangled in bracken at midnight and, later, choking to death on brandy in the basement. 

What is given, gifted, what cannot be, ever.

The boy who is often hurt, always scared, the men that boy becomes. 

After grace. After samsara.

After liberation. 

I was stranded in Vermont, I see that now. Vermont was not my home, I have no home. 

I see that now.

I am here with you now, that is all I want now. 

What promises in me is taken in the dust behind the church of what is holy in you. Made briefly perfect in you. 

What cannot be transgressed or transmuted in you.

What is answered in you, what cannot be, ever.