“Waking in the dark, or waking at first light, the day startles us out of sleepy half-light, sometimes into gnawing fear, or, on a good day, into blissful remembrance of happy or happier times. I don’t remember well the feeling of safety. Yet, the beneficent pink of the sky, the stately bearing of soldiering spruces laden with snow, it pierces the heart with hope. If only for a split second, as the soul takes in the anti-chronology of peace, instinctually. The pristine structure of biological life, well, here we are. Standing on the precipice of blooming out from that unparalleled system of love, or succumbing to genetic alteration. A reality that some might consider valid, or a live action role play, or a farce. You get to choose. For myself, I can’t think clearly, without my hand on a broom, or a shovel, or a heavy cast iron skillet. I’m tactile, rooted in repetitive motion, comforted by rituals of care that dissipate anger, confusion and grief. A timeless garden of invisible standing stones, where my body & all its unfathomable secrets, ring like a sonorous church bell. And the delicate snow keeps falling, softer and softer, day after day. Who could fail to notice winter’s feathers, settling down all around? An incredible moment has finally arrived. A true liberation of spirit, amidst the awful, tawdry shit shows of punditry, and talking, corpse-like doll men. And so, we push off & away from the hypnotic, into the clarity of a brighter dawn, our dawn. Without the maple chunks, my strength would languish; without huge obstacles fallen across my path, I might never have seen how keenly you suffer. The unbearable trees, crashed & blocking free skiing, as you told me what it meant to you to be thwarted in the middle of an incredible glissando. I listened, I couldn’t move as you told me. I was frozen, but not by any trick of the chill. I loved you more, the more you told me, in confidence. I felt my own life, hard as its been, somehow put in its place. Still illuminated by the most undying of fires, told only by woods dwellers. By those who chose silence, in the end, over talk. Listening, over assertion. Praying, over hype.”
