A Study of Agony

For a few minutes there is no body, only rain falling in the pasture. Barn owls sailing in low arcs across Route Nine west. Now we are nowhere, now we are nothing. Deep in January, stillness owns the flavor of salt, and you remember how a righteous king makes decisions. Unable to sleep, I devote myself to a study of agony, and find in it a lonely, not unsterile joy. You walk a long way alone long enough the question what do you want evaporates, even want evaporates, but something does not evaporate, and that's what I want. Winter is in so many ways not the end it pretends to be. A single hill in the interior made of lifetimes choosing not to climb a single hill in the interior. All night rain falling, notes arriving from a country I was not allowed to visit. The world a cell nurturing prayer, surrendered without a hitch. How happy one can be in the fluvial darkness, no clock or calendar, no aspirin or bible, God so big and unpredictable.