Letters from the Outside, #9

Excrescence. Fricative. Pixie. Saturday evening french-press and a book in the big chair. My first hundred had me a little worried, but right after that I fell into it and ill be sorry to see it end. They even mention “a very dry Finger Lakes Riesling he'd apparently been saving for just such an emergency.” the breaking of the third wall that the book does, maybe this is a stand-by of postmodern literature that im just not party to because im not much for postmodern literature, but it unnerves me, making direct references to the Harry Potter books, and texting. I specifically investigated postmodern literature recently and discovered its not my thing. If The Magicians is postmodern, its soft-core. I share peanut butter M&Ms with the poodle whos birthday it is today. Extra treats all around and a share of a coconut donut to celebrate, an evening ride through town ears flying, nose in the wind. Earlier we drove awhile looking for the mama dog but it turned out she was under the outhouse all along, citing a personal day.

I listen to James McMurtry play guitar like Richard Thompson. Your fruit trees miss you, neighbor.

The one dutch belted heifer and her spotted calf by the creek along the pasture, the segregated angus together in a pool of shade out of town. The swell of butterflies, standing at the kitchen sink and several different species play zipless fuck with the coneflowers, the buddleia, the asclepias. I realize that the old womans gazing ball comes and goes with the sun, every morning early she replaces in onto the wooden paws of the performing bear, bearing the reflection of the world and she worries it might get stolen overnight. Across from the widows house under the lovely old apple tree a harem of does and fawn raise their cross-piece heads and bolt back toward the swamp theres one older fawn still spotted on the other side of the road and you can tell its a young buck and before he cuts my right into the hill hes running toward us, his blood already knowing the difference. The sumac are just starting to turn that extraordinary turning and walking into this dark and breezy evening the wind sounds just like rain.

I start picking tomatoes, like collecting eggs hung in panniers across their mothers. I have yet to second-sow but I imagine it will happen soon. Today that dark ray shining through an aperture in the cloud arrow of some bad energy drawn down or rising but the shadow of whatever channel the curse tracks on and later on taking the night quickly into me from the passenger side I think a beautiful woman is a curse; she is a holiness, this idea complete and fleeting like a photo of something written in the sand. The cards said The Empress, Shekinah.

The cats got a rabbit, tore its head off, and Cowboy buried it early sunday morning. They left us both parts, they were so proud. I, of course, was horrified. I have a long-standing magickal association with rabbits. I tried not to read too much into the offering of a decapitated totem animal, but it brought my gorge up like chipmunks and voles dont while I shovel away their gel and entrails. I got him out of bed and into his boots to bury a bunny. He did this with the absolute necessary minimum of vitriol. A Good Man.

Torrential on sunday then it opened up into this beautiful late summer afternoon with birds and sun and a sense of resting. Monday rises one of those brilliant mornings after rain and either the old woman wept loudly or some new puppy cried lonesome, and I noticed the gazing ball hadnt been set out for the day. Rain in the culverts in august where i walk. I do my best thinking when Im walking. And recently realized the egregious amount of headspace storing temporary memory files takes. So I write it down. After that I can let it go, hands open and listening. After that though, theres no craft. No nursery bed for it to grow bigger in, just pinned and mounted onto the ether like a beautiful, inert butterfly. I refuse it the time it requires to live, and grow. Walking through premenstrual density and at the top of the rise a prayer came to me, invoking and encompassing, a gesture toward the belly, the breastbone and the sky. Thats when the old woman wept, I prayed to an acorn, and the wind carried my scent toward the water.