“I linger in the parking lot, comfortably wedged behind my steering wheel, grateful to have a heater, and food. For some, the safe haven of a vehicle is nothing to scoff at. It’s mid-afternoon, and I haven’t eaten yet, due to other obligations. The morning went well. An interviewer from one of Vermont’s last remaining paper newspapers, spent an hour with me before lunch. I don’t think I said anything too weird, which was a stroke of good luck. Now, with wind gently shaking the truck, I ravenously spoon hot vegetable and bean soup into my mouth, realizing what’s been missing from my day. Nourishment, care, time. This pause, for eating, finally not being “on”, reminds me that I live on my own island, beholden to no one. It feels good, and earned. I take a deep sigh, and sink back into the plush 2017 upholstery of a Chevy truck. I’m aware of the thrumming of the truck fan, the roar of a fighter jet taking off, the throaty rasp of sea gulls flying around the Taft’s Corners’ malls, and a feeling of autonomy. I can do this, and I have been doing this. I can keep this going, as long as I’m cognizant of magnetic north, of what’s true. with a bit of leeway, of course, for hard times. So I don’t overthink the occasional excesses, the “don’t do as I do” moments. Or the strange drops in temperature, that come unbidden. Driving back from the job in Randolph yesterday, I watched the dashboard thermometer go from 70 degrees, to 46. Life can be like that. Too hot, then too cold. I’ve dragged all my pots of newly planted annuals inside tonight, and my two wood stoves are burning dry wood, finally. It snowed here today. I had to bundle up and wear a wool hat. But I am determined, I have to say. And curious about the cold snap, and its grip on things. I was all aglow today, to see what the happenings to the surface of Bristol’s wild pond. You don’t see that kind of blue very much. Eventually I find myself snaking my way home, through Huntington. On a road I used to live on. Moody Road. That tells it all. With a dog named Bonky, and a man named Dusty. It isn’t really important, any of that, except that the names have a kind of lilt, now, in hindsight. Life is poetic. The last descendent of that road lived in a shack, as I recall it, one room, on the side of a road named after his family. He was sick, and lived on canned tomato soup as far as I could tell, and we stopped by to see him, once in a while. Today, I tried to find the traces of Mac, but really couldn’t get my bearings. His shack was certainly bull dozed under, a long time ago. The spec houses, and expanding suburbia can only be remarked upon, with major grains of salt. Well, it was inevitable. Farming as a life, or living marginally, but successfully, just isn’t that much of a thing anymore, in Vermont. What they have done is send you to trailer parks, or Florida, if you really sold your farm big time. I totally see the nuances of this, at my level of understanding. I miss my awkward visits with a whole host of characters. Ed Rotax who ran a saw mill & whose antique car I rode in at the Bristol 4th of July parade, Ray Grimes who was one of the first fiddle players I ever tried to accompany, Wayne Doyle “Wayner” my gas man who also played the fiddle and danced with a top hat at the Tunbridge World’s Fair each year, excavator Spike McCullough who loved to see me at the post office and told me the same story about Gary Thrasher for about 30 years, Ronni Solbert who inspired me to be the poet that I am, as she continued to sculpt and show her work into her 90s ... there are many more. I guess with a few more years on my chassis, I’ll be one of those characters, myself. That’s how this system works, if you last long enough to enjoy & appreciate the strange beauty of it, and drink it down without reservation, to the very last drop.”
