Further Thought

Something woke me up, probably a dead snag falling. Then there were the frogs. I knew there was a cup of coffee in the pot, with sugar and cream, nuke it. I drink coffee the rest of you throw away. It's not so bad. Sometimes you just need a hot liquid. Tree frogs are early. Peepers. Whip-O-Wills. Be hard to get back to sleep. I turn on the radio, for no reason, and it's K.D. Laing, covering a Bob Dylan song. She has great phrasing. Stumbles a bit when the words get too close together, and it's endearing, or whatever word you'd use to be politically correct, I like her voice. If I whisper in your ear, it's only because I take you into confidence. The jury pool, venire, is a matter of chance, a random selection, the next stage, where we seat the jury, is a matter of challenges, voir dire, to speak the truth. What chance is there of that? Can 12 randomly selected people actually decide what happened? I'm suspect. Not to confuse the issue, but the very ground is confused. It shakes. What do you do with the pieces of a broken heart? A romantic, tangled in bull vine. I try, I don't know why. Denial almost always lies. Look on the face of it. What you might have said. Emily said "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul." I have to turn the radio off, kill the breaker for the fridge, there's something I'm missing, that piece of the puzzle. Crypsis. Then I have it, a bleached flamingo, nothing ever was. I fall back in my chair. Finally do fall back asleep, on the sofa, reading Terry Tempest Williams. "Refuge." Bright beautiful morning, and the wind has died down. Put on a sacrificial long-sleeved shirt and Carhartt bibs, go out to harvest breakfast. Five plump morels are enough for another omelet, toast with hot pepper jam, several cups of coffee. Back outside I'm finding many small morels just breaking through the litter, several in clumps. I mark them with clipped sticks, to let them grow for another day or two. In the afternoon I carve a path to the graveyard, then beyond, to the next ridge running north. A couple of years ago I found a coon dog in the woods, took it home and called the owner (dog tag) and when he came to get her, when I wouldn't accept his money, he told me that particular ridge was good hunting grounds. It is. I bring home another dozen and have them on toast. Dozens of yellow swallowtails flittering around the yard. I take a beer and a smoke over to the driveway puddle and watch the salamanders. They're Spotted Salamanders, ambystoma maculatum. Two of them are engaged in what I take to be a courtship ritual, one has the other wrapped around the neck with his hind feet, they spin like a caduceus. One of the others seems to be eating salamander spat. They eat each other, I didn't know that. Cannibals. A guest calls to cancel, and I decide to take a bath on the front deck. I smell like the leaf-litter at this point, a musky, earthy smell that I quite like, but I have to go to work tomorrow. So I flip over the sheep watering trough and heat water on the stove. Warm enough that I can bathe outside, soak my hidden scars, replenish. I stay so long, musing, that I heat another couple gallons of rain water, and immerse myself more completely. I need someone to rub my neck, but broken sun is enough. The promise of tomorrow. So little, really, to go on. A fretwork, a web of rebar. I had no idea the camera was rolling, I was just fixing dinner and trying to write. I seem to mumble almost all the time, whistle a tune badly, it's a character defect, one of many. It's amazing I can appear in public. The unwashed me, on the ridge, is a different creature. Soaking, I was thinking about this natural world, where I find myself in a sheep watering trough, listening to the birds, and its relationship to the world out there, the strip malls and fast food. No conclusions. "I'm just a janitor but I'm OK." Lull myself into a sense of order. Nothing a dram of Irish couldn't cure, or rye, since I'm really not Irish, whatever your chosen poison might be. The sweet whimperings of various birds at dusk is a lovely thing, I toast the portal and the various attendant gods and goddesses, Janus or Janice, that make it possible for me to hear birdsong. I'm expecting a pound of mushrooms tomorrow. I may have to take off work. I have all the components for a Cream of Morel soup. Never had it before, but it seems like a logical step. I think I'll use coconut milk. Just because that's all I have, if you're doing this at home, use half-and-half or whatever soy product is equivalent; I'm confused, but I use the blender, and it works, what I say to you. Go figure.