“We can’t always be close to the ones we’ve loved, but sometimes we can walk without them, as if they were there. It’s been a long, gnarled season of honoring the dead, and those seemingly dead to our influence. The wide pine boards I so carefully studied in my barn where he’d left them, and never could abandon, for close to a decade. When someone stops caring, you can still care. Moving stacks of lumber that were milled off local land, by friends rotating a friendship, so deep and musical in the making of it, that no one could ever corrupt that song. And yet ... they did, in some megalomania, finally, lose sight of the tribe. Cutting ties from the quiet ones, who had ceased speaking, and telling, moving out of the way as they ascended, to let them learn. The blue & brown swirls like river turbulence, of these same decades old wide pine boards, planed and polished, sanded and finished, by new hands, they will miss. As it should be. Similarly, the loss of certain feet and deer hunter traipses, will ever haunt the hills of my life. I couldn’t hold on, to anything. Perhaps time wishes to reduce us, or we, in our anguish, reduce ourselves. Where the heart had flown in hopeful anticipation, at the sight of lights at twilight, at the glimpses of an imagined home, now, they cruise at a lower altitude, sinking to the inky places of night. Not everyone is required to plod into murky, trackless territory - thankfully, no, not everyone needs do it. But some do. Those who are used to wanting, to aching, to begging, to stumbling and craving and crackling with pleasure as leaves tremble or clouds go off script into heavenly colors. Oh heck, why not. We are all just extensions of each other, take heart, be forgiving. Here my hands submerge in icy water, where rain has flooded the garden, as I grope to maintain a more summerly order, as the final days of autumn run out. The shifting of the sun, as it falls into clefts or suddenly emerges from hiding itself, revealing at once warming, and denying all warmth. I get this game, and it says, stay on your toes, don’t settle. Using the sharpest of Japanese sickles, and an older set of serviceable snips, I’ve run through asters, lobelia, ragwort and grass ... iris, phlox, lamium, holly hock, bee balm and hypericum ... and ultimately, cut the asparagus, the ornamental grasses and done in the last of the dandelions in the blueberry patch. No one came to see me, though a few cars passed by, far below, on the rural road. I think of the felons, or businessmen I’ve served plates to or given my hopes to. That whole mess is nearly forgotten, yet as I stand by my four wheeled vehicle in a pile of leaf rot, releasing the dump body to unburden my load, this out of the way place, it calms me with magic. Where this one went bankrupt, and that one lapsed back into drinking, where this other one died though at the end, he’d tried to send me a message, which was gibberish: it’s just a parallel play. It’s a universe of everything absurd, that we must walk thru or around, without malice, without shame. Where we don’t get what we want, on some kind of timeline. No, it’s the endurance test, of a lifetime. On a good day, like today, I get fresh baked Danish at the Barnard store, and hot coffee to start. To tackle, head on, the ironic contradictions of the plant kingdom, with my own need to understand. Who is playing what role, and what I want to be. I won’t be a broker, or sidle up, or be a kiss ass. It’s hard to watch those people. That’s why I make gardens, move rocks, and get cold in November. On days like today, coming home after dark, very wet and very worn down. Still defiant and wrapped up in my own concept of badassery, however misguided.”
