Almost Always

The sound of wind through leaves has always interested me. Fishing, as a kid, Dad, an old sailor, would always anchor our small fishing boat in the lee of some trees when it was windy. Hot days on the river, Julington River, a tributary of the St. Johns, two rivers, actually, and Clark's Fish Camp was where they converged, so we could fish a lot of water, and we knew it well, knew where the spawning beds were, had maybe a dozen private spots and almost always caught fish. Manatees, alligators, snakes, saw my first bear there, on the peninsula, a swampy tangle, that threaded between the rivers. We where stake-poled, still-fishing for blue-gill, and he came right down to the water's edge; we were fifteen feet out, he looked at us, we looked at him, he wandered away. I early on learned the lesson of the benign encounter, confrontation is always a last resort. Sublimation, is the word Neal asked for years ago, I finally remembered, it's also called evapo-transpiration, I think. That process whereby something skips a step. From ice to vapor, without ever being a liquid, why clothes can dry frozen. But I was talking about the wind, the lee of, and we'd hear the gusts coming, and then they'd hit the trees at our back, it's a rush. I was addicted from the beginning. My parents didn't listen to music, at all, nothing I remember, then I find myself doing musicals, then serious opera, and I'm not a sound person. I'm a visual, smell person, not a sound person. It's May Day, we should be pulling our rockets through the square. Instead D struggles with a design, and there's an event no one warned me about. I pull out the union papers, oh, fuck, there are no union papers, but I'm pretty sure I asked at the last staff meeting if there was anything coming up. Left field. We're fine, because I understand this situation, I dished it off to Trish and told her to just put it on the calendar. Something that needed to be done. Everyone else's agenda, I can't speak. He's on the other line. Listen. Maybe we should integrate something. I thought what he was saying referred to a particular knot. Imagine the confusion., he was talking about something else, something probably more private, and you didn't understand he was being honest, for once, that nothing couldn't be taken away, look at the numbers, the distribution. Eventually they'll call ii the Bridwell Curve, something that leads nowhere. I accept that, what I am, a Trojan horse, what you thought you understood. What I thought you heard. Spare me. I rise merely above the plain, forgive me, I don't undrerstand
then the language enjambs. I need to go to sleep but we could talk later. Let's stay in touch.