By Extension

Something fairly painful. Like maybe you'd barked your shin on the edge of a bookcase, going out to pee, or stubbed your toe. Whether or not to drop a comma doesn't seem like a big deal. Coming out of Cincy, to the east, there's a diner I like, where you can get a good bowl of soup, and fried pickles. I stop there, whenever I pick up artwork, because the owner's daughter is a raving beauty and the soup is really good. Like something you'd fix for relatives. Chicken and noodles on mashed potatoes. A gravy to die for. Usually people die for better reasons, but a perfect gravy might be reason enough. Dawns on a beautiful day, severe clear, nearing full leaf-out, even the black walnut. I must have planted 100 of them in Missip. Their roots release a broad-leaf herbicide, to protect their mineral rights, so a stand of them is very park-like. In an old pasture I didn't need any more I planted 1000 yellow pines, not loblolly, and I'd like to see those today. I've planted trees everywhere I've lived, and it would be an interesting road trip, to visit them, see what survived. I generally add the extra comma, because I hear all this in a spoken voice, and now that I don't use line breaks as a form of punctuation, I add them for the speaking voice. Letting the line wrap was a great liberation for me, I didn't have to be so prissy anymore (just me I'm talking about) and I could build blocks of text. Tutored by one of the great minimalist, in language, of this generation, who offed himself, on my watch, and left behind five books, of which I hold the manuscript copies. I didn't ask to be put in this position. One of those guides had climbed Everest four times that year, talk about a record. A matter of course. Achieving the summit is a big deal, but maybe not, one Sherpa has done it over twenty times.