With Bated Breath

Journal 1.6.25

9:12PM

Yes it is 9:12PM if I allow the idea of time time TIME practical yes practical time. In my shed that is covered in snow the yellow glow of the hanging light bulb and my breath is visible in a methodical way over the notebook. Yes it is cold but strangely I don’t feel it today or tonight or anymore? And the fire has just started to roar I can hear it crackling I can smell it I can hear the flu pulling the flame but it is not warm and the log burner is hungry very hungry eating up whole pieces of wood in single bites and I gave myself to the snow today and it took me. And I don’t know if I see the little sparrows differently in the snow or if the little sparrows see me differently in the snow or if I’ve never fully seen them before but today I saw them I saw them. Fluttering up from bones of frost asters. Bones of black-eyed susans. Bones of goldenrods. Bones of Queen Anne’s lace. And I followed them into the meadow and I saw that things die but they don’t really die. They radiate. And went through me yes and I know all go unto one place (Ecclesiastes 3:20 KJV). The place where I came from and it came from the place where I will return and it will return. And I thought of these impossible dead but not dead flowers shriveled up in some quiet corner grasping but they were grasping all and I asked them how how HOW? And I asked myself then what? When you find all your answers? Do you change the way you live? The house you live in? What you eat with whom you eat? Trying to find all the answers have you considered the whole thing is designed so you don’t? And I let go and watched my feet trudge through snow between rows of headless corn. Beautiful corn. Yes I passed the “Tockwogh” trail so many Indian names we use to honor them or names we’ve taken from them or… I don’t know I can’t know it isn’t here to know but then I think yes they are here. I feel them in the land giving heaviness to my feet. All the people who came before me. They ate corn and fish and fowl. And I step into the empty hunting blind high on the cornfield and I look out over the thousands of black stumps toward the tree line. And I think about the story I’m going to tell with corn and fish and fowl. And so I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter (Ecclesiastes 4:1 KJV). And the doors of my shed are rattling they are rattling THEY ARE RATTLING the wind is howling through the windows the fire is being sucked from the log burner the walls are shaking the floor is quaking buffalo buffalo buffalo stampeding and I say louder THEN WHAT? WHEN YOU FIND ALL YOUR ANSWERS? DO YOU CHANGE THE WAY YOU LIVE? THE HOUSE YOU LIVE IN? WHAT YOU EAT WITH WHOM YOU EAT? TRYING TO FIND ALL THE ANSWERS HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THE WHOLE THING IS DESIGNED SO YOU DON’T? And the wind has softened. And the fire whispers. And a warrior crouches on deerskin feet. And with bated breath I wait to turn to dust again (Ecclesiastes 3:20 KJV).