Red Moon

Shafts of light from behind broken clouds, then the moon, replete. Stable and haloed. A big round rock in the sky. Things that spin tend to end up round. As witness I call an oblate spheroid. Abrading toward roundness. It could be that my phone is dead, and I don't have an easy way of testing that, and not my service. I buy cheap phones at Big Lots and they serve my needs. Ten bucks and tax. I don't know if it's even needed, where John Wayne comes in and kisses the horse behind her ear. I don't want to read too much into that, what you do in your spare time. Spare Time? Are you kidding me. The good news is that next Sunday is Easter, and the day after that lamb will be on sale. I can't plan ahead, because I don't know what cuts I'll be getting, but I do know I'll be eating lamb next week and that puts a smile on my face. The phone is still out. It's very quiet, the muffled silence of snow, when I wake before dawn to pee. The house was cold, and I built a little fire, before I went outside. It was beautiful, in the beam of my LED headlamp. Soft white on the soft greens buds and unfurling leaves. There was not supposed to be any accumulation, but there's two inches and it's snowing hard. Still, it was seventy degrees yesterday and I know the ground is warm, it can't possibly linger for long. Decided to stay up, rather than crawling back into my down bag; made a double espresso, rolled a smoke. I think about the opera TR wants to do. I think about a book of mine I'm editing, then I think about writing you. Morels and a fried egg on a bed of polenta. The weather has certainly affected my harvest. The watch-word on a really brutal winter, is that you're going to expect an equally brutal spring. I have to think about that. One thing leads to another. We nurture the delusion that we control events. I'm planning a meal for twelve, a mental exercise, thinking about cooking at Terry's. He specified ribs for the first meal. A simple menu: ribs, roasted purple potatoes, coleslaw, a bread of some kind. Several rolls of paper towels. Cooking for twelve is completely different than cooking for two or three. The scale of it. So I think it through. It's fun, and interesting, imagining the things that could go wrong. And you know things will go wrong, it's the way of the world; maybe you can contain the damage, or maybe you can't, but there will be a misstep along the way. Someone stumbles, someone falls. Olives and grapes in the grout joints. Free me Lord, oh free me. It's all bullshit and I don't want to be a part of it. Everything is mostly normal, when it occurs to me I could say anything, if my tongue wasn't tied.