“The little dog stops in the rain. So we do, to watch her do it, while the heartbeat of the forest thrums. I feel the suction of mud as my boots adjust, to a slight downhill. I might slip. But I’m so wet already, it doesn’t matter. The bottom half of my jeans is pulling down the top half. The air is soup, obscuring any view of the mountains we might have seen thru the trees. We’re socked in, counting streams as we cross, following our ears to the next barometric hotspot, fine droplets then chattery showers, then the yelling of myriad marshy trickles thrust agape off boulders’ edge, into darker, raucous sluiceways. No one “Enters Nation Forest Wilderness”, rather they stumble clueless past tangles of bear dens, dense cities of fern, wet granite cliffs rising from bowls of cat tailed muck, their fallen groves cyclically rotting, their canopy leaf flags fluttering and flirting with the remoteness of ridges. Wandered in but never truly charted, the spinning compass of the underworld persists here, lacking the clarity of byways, or blazes. Which is why we didn’t mean to be exactly here, but were. Undoing things once taught, like how to sit at a desk for a day, practice pointless disciplines, or eat with a spoon. Forty years since I lived in the city, climbed its grubby platforms, watched other pallid faces, as well as my own, in the dirty transit windows, that took us away, together, and apart, nervous & attracted where not to go, but often found there, off-course, furtively self conscious, beguiled by levels, especially those above, and lower, loneliness like the clip of my heels, the chip in my chest, and the echoing, cavernous stairwells’ return. But that was then. Now, I’m the little dog in the rain, sopping fur & delicate ribs, like drunk butterflies, my bulging heart pumping out a giddy hello, way too eager to meet this presentation we’ve dubbed “the world”. I might realize what a meager set of tools I have, not up to snuff for the enormous task at hand, but some must dream these dreams, of old lovers who were bullies, parents who withheld, friends who betrayed, yes, we still dream of their arms around, protective, their strong embrace, the much longed for illuminated lantern walk of care, bringing us to safety & comfort from which there will be no release. Out of the bat cave into the shaft of eternal light. Looking both ways before crossing to your car parked on Main Street in front of the Methodist church, in a sleepy Vermont village. Muffin & coffee in a bag, having wanted for a long time, without having gotten what you wanted, but crossing with an eye out for death, anyways. Getting on with life in whatever way you know how. Or maybe you had it but you lost it. Some mysteries are only jimmied open using arrowheads, bones, and frustration. Doing ordinary things as if they contained a profound blessing. Because they do.”
