We work for God.

Lately I feel like Lieutenant Dan, I was supposed to have died in the war! I felt like a ghost today, visiting the skeleton of a previous life. There is a tragic lack of warriors in this part of the world.

I am irritated. Annoyed, misunderstood, angry. There is something under my skin that I can't ignore or make go away. A restlessness that has never plagued me before.

They have taken my sword and shield, so I fight with my fists and pray for St. Michael to watch my back.

No poetry today.

Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't born at the very beginning of a slow and determined decline. The start of the end for the second coming of this land's gilded age. Like an avalanche is at first imperceptible, but builds up the strength and might to ultimately level forests, destroy villages.

I have tried to put my finger on the event that happened between my grandfather's generation and now, but mostly it's just been like checking the tree tops for wind direction in a tornado. Sometimes I wonder if it's a lack of tragedy; if our combined experience lacks a trauma with enough reverberation to shake us to our core, to solidify us towards a common goal of becoming better humans. They had the world wars, and the great depression: events which required the nation to pull together if it was to survive. Literally. We had the gulf wars and 9/11: events which catalyzed us for a time, but ultimately were removed enough from our daily existence that we were not forced to pay them any mind if we had other things to do. Trips to Walmart, a corn-hole tournament, plugging into the season's hottest new show.

By choosing comfort over concern, we have destroyed ourselves.

I don't mean to be up on a soapbox. In fact, I feel just about as down and out as a white girl who owns a house and a car can. As I watch the balance of my bank account sink lower and lower. I think that all of this was conjured up because of the meeting on Monday. The city's old chief was there, all 5 feet of him, and even though he was weathered, wrinkled, grey, you could not help but take notice of him and be respectful of his presence. What we do with our lives brands our spirits, it seems to me, and the strength of that branding is perceptible (to varying degrees) to the people we come in contact with. By contrast, the current chief was there and one could have gone all meeting and not noticed. His lithe frame made transparent by his complete and utter lack of zeal, or earnestness.

The old chief shook my hand and asked me how I was doing and an unspoken outrage passed between our glances. The new chief ignored me completely.

This country is hard on people.

I remembered this stupid movie that I watched with my ex, a drop in the bucket of stupid movies that we watched together. Stay Hungry. The Governator was in it, and I remember him giving this surprising and poignant monologue about how it was important to stay hungry in life, because hunger (figuratively and literally) is one of the best motivators there is. Complacency being tantamount to death, atrophy. I would like to work my fingers to the bone, I would like to toil until my clothes are threadbare, my body is sinew and my mind finds the strength that exists beyond exhaustion. I want to wake up hungry and work for my reward. I want to be old, and weathered, and grey, and to walk into a room and just be barely able to fit my spirit inside with me.

Because in all of these trials I keep coming back to the knowledge that there is no normal life. The belief in such a thing is a farce, that the avalanche of decline can only tear down.

Let go lightly

I was never one of those individuals who knew that they wanted to be an officer since they were a child. I remember specifically when I got the calling. I was in Oregon, on the coast, on a long vacation with my then husband, exploring the small towns along the Pacific. We had just made it into Tillamook, stopped for espresso and hiked out to an isolated beach. I took my shoes off and stood barefoot on the cold sand, sipping my coffee while the waves crashed and receded around my feet. The sun was warm on my back and I closed my eyes to soak it all in.

It came all at once and with no warning or explanation. I saw myself in a patrol car, clad entirely in dark blue, blonde hair pulled back tightly, driving my black-and-white up a wide expanse of asphalt. It was a nondescript shopping area in an anonymous city. The sun beat down in my vision and I had a feeling that I could only describe as the satisfaction of a heart finding its home.

A seagull cried out in the clear blue sky high above and I was instantly back on the beach, feet buried in sand and almost numb from the cold of the sea. We continued down the coast and I took that vision and sequestered it away in the place I safeguard all of my secrets. Protecting that young and fragile dream from the doubt and insecurity that was surely to come from the people in my life at the time. Keeping watch over it until it had matured and had the strength and determination to withstand all the nay-saying and fear of change. I had been called, and there was nothing I could do but answer.

Three, maybe four years later I can't help but feel the gratitude swell in my heart when I conjure up that memory. I have come a long way since that afternoon on the beach, and it would be a lie if I said that I didn't lose a lot on the journey. But what I have gained is indescribable and priceless. Someone told me once that God provides us with everything if we just point our hearts in His direction. I would be a fool to think, now especially, that those words had no truth.

I meant it when I told my dad that I derive an untold amount of pride each time that I put my uniform on and see his name, and my grandfather's name, carved in steel and pinned to my chest. There is nothing to hold you back once you realize that you are already victorious. Change comes, it has its purpose, and we don't always have the fortune of understanding why or for what.

I am a ball of potential energy, a heart again looking for its home. Maybe this has all been a reminder that a true warrior walks alone; the lack of leadership, the squandered loyalty, the love that will never be my own. I tell myself, and my mom reaffirms, that this is a test to see if I am ready for what waits ahead, just out of sight. I have cut the patches from my sleeves and set out with a heart full of hope. Blessed be the journey, may we find ourselves along the way.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Happy New Year to all of the amazing people in my life. My family, my friends, my brothers in blue. May we have the hindsight to know where we've been, the foresight to know where we're going, and the insight to know when we've gone too far. May we know only happiness in the coming year.

Sighted

This time of year always forces me to turn inward, as if my mind feels it's somehow right, or appropriate, to mirror nature's decline as the calendar treads undeterred into the winter. The earth absorbs the summer's excess as it does every year. And so does my heart absorb the excess of the past months by closing up shop and barricading the windows. It must have heard of the tempest coming.

He left and I wondered why I invite such chaos into my life. How I can entertain such an hypocrisy. Of late when I head out into the wide world I take a suspicious glance upwards, for fear that I have become one of those upon whom the sky will cave in, by and by. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. Sometimes I have this image of myself running through an abandoned salt flat, barren of anything, myself completely unencumbered headed into the unknowable future. When I come back down I think of Atlas and what it is to be burdened.

But I was lucky, and I got these words from Grandfather Z and he said, A day you don't laugh is a day wasted, and I carry them around like a sacred trust.

We save the seriousness for the battle, which is most of the time fought internally anyway. This life is more fragile than a feather and one can only but take it half-heartedly. If you squeeze to hard it will break.

I am thankful for you, Emily. So much so that there is absolutely no way I can describe the how or why with words. To try would be to make it cheap.

Offering up my faith.

She tells me that you do not have to be good, and I assure myself that no, I am not. I have broken bones and scar tissue and where they have ossified and healed and grown over is the source of my strength, battle-tested and ready for war. I am twenty-five generations of warrior pumping hot and fast through a resolved heart. Here for the reckoning, like notches on a post.

Ready. Waiting. Selfless. The sheepdog can smell the wolf coming for miles.

They had a staff meeting where our leader told them that none of us were to hang around station, that we were all to be out constantly, being productive, displaying a basic competence at being able to do work. He relays this information to me after I had single-handedly wrung up a theft and criminal tools possession in under 30 minutes, and headed back out onto the street. Not that it was a noteworthy accomplishment, just that I am a hard worker. While I was getting the fingerprints I could hear 1/3 of our shift sitting in the squad room, all with feet propped up on the table, commiserating about how the layoffs will leave them all short-shifted.

The irony of it was not lost on me.

Back out on the street I wracked up two more reports and finished them while remaining in service and responding to several other calls for service. Met up with my brother and we talked at length about what a disaster it is to put power in the hands of fools, and that the quest for efficiency by such people generally results in a culling of the best and brightest. Because like water we are constantly in motion, seeking out our own level.

I am a part of St. Michael's legion. When I look at myself in the mirror the eyes looking back are full of humility at having been able to serve with such noble-hearted people. But the furrowed brow has already slipped into self-preservation mode and has moved on.

Like when I was a kid in church, I spend much of my time looking at my hands, wondering what they will master next.

Feather in my cap.

It was a case that came to me originally because I could not live with it getting thrown away. The others called 10-8 when we couldn't find the suspect vehicle, but just shrugging my shoulders and moving on didn't sit right. I went in, did a little talking and walked out with a felony investigation, surveillance video, license plate, serial numbers and a fire in my belly.

I dug deep into my bag of tricks and came up with an address and a lead. The phone numbers were dead ends so I enlisted the help of another PD and when I came back to work I had eight messages full of anxiety and apprehension. The lion circled her prey and she could not help but taste the ripeness of the hunt on her tongue.

And in the middle of the investigation was the meeting, the letter, the death and a lifetime's worth of heart ache.

They came on station and asked if they were going to be arrested on the spot. I had to hide victory's smile behind a furrowed brow and a feigned detachment. I recited Miranda like a reading from the old testament and went to work. I watched the body language and analyzed the stuttered speech, checking off the cues as if I had a liar's checklist. The statement in written word was more than I had hoped for and as I escorted them out I could not help but nod to the ghost of my grandfather. We few, we happy few. There is nothing in the world like this job.

Made a photo line-up with my other suspect's visage and typed up the story to be kept forever. To be immortalized in the guts of the department's records, even if its author's tenure is on the downward slope of time.

Hit the streets, 10-8, like a fucking cowboy, awestruck by how much of this life is a gift. Every day is your resume, he tells me, and a day like today I can't help but feel like I've done the name proud.

And when I think about it, that's all that I really want. A chance to ply my trade and leave my mark for whatever jurisdiction will have me. I hope and pray and beat my chest that in the future it will be the same supervisors who sign my reports. But I do not pretend to know what God has in store for me -- my hypocrisy goes only so far. All I know is that if this was my last felony case in that uniform, that I did it proud and left constantly climbing without slowing down.

A toast to my forebears. And to the job, my calling. If nothing else I know what I was built for. And that is so much more than so many will ever have.

St. Michael, I am at your feet.

The glory.

In my head the lyrics looped, do you think about me now and then, do you still remember when? I'm coming home again. My phone rang and I couldn't avoid it because we had been parked together for so long that I had no more excuses.

His voice was pitched and stressed out and I wondered if it was possible for him to be feeling worse for me than I was. And I knew that if it was possible, he was. We talked and I joked and tried to make light of it, to ease his worry, and meanwhile fingertip to fingertip we exchanged vows through open windows, words unspoken. I looked over at him once and he was crying. I looked over at him once or twice and he was crying.

Holy Father, hear my prayer.

I looked at him underneath the distorting lamplight and he just looked away, out the fogged up passenger window, and clamped down on that piece of skin that bridges the nose, that links eyebrow to eyebrow. What do you say when you see a mountain crumble? What good are words when nothing makes sense?

Later on a call, because I could not stay busy enough, we looked at each other, contemplating the reality of having to blow away a fucker wanting suicide by cop, and at the same time we had the same thought, the same solution. He just smiled at me as I pulled my gun and we two went forward, in a fucked up waltz, never once stepping on the other's toes. What will you do when I'm gone, and if, I wondered.

I drove around in concentric rings of not wanting to give it up, and every now and then our paths met up, every now and then we hunted in the same circles. When we were still for a moment all that he could tell me was that I was loved, did I know how much I was loved? The boys bolstering for me, even the laziest of them out to write tickets as if one hundred dollars here or there was the answer. The redness around his eyes and the way he looks away.

Later today I will break the news. Later today it will be like the ton of bricks that he talks about laying so heavily on his chest.

But not now. Now just the memory and the gratefulness. No matter what happens I have had so much more than so many others.

St. Michael, hear my prayer.

The iceberg you don't see.

My phone rang on the way in and he spoke to me in whispers, confidential tones, and my bottom dropped out right there on the highway. I played Stronger in a continuous loop all the way in as if the lyrics could bolster my courage through some kind of fucked up osmosis. Got in, got changed, and went to work on a case that had almost been thrown away by laziness and complacency.

The irony of it.

Then a text message and a secret meeting and the look of concern in eyes that I'd never seen worry before. Just how deep in this am I? It felt like someone had ripped through my chest and pulled my heart out, still beating. A black hole in the pit of my stomach.

Then the official meeting and the announcement that there might be lay-offs and they didn't know how many and they didn't know just what it all meant. Not yet. Just don't panic, don't panic. I fixed myself to the wall in the back to keep from falling, to keep from letting the chink in my armor be visible to any one of my brethren. There can be no weakness, not here.

And I tried like hell to make it out alone, to just get back to my car and hit the mean streets and resume the only piece of normalcy that I knew, the only answer I had for myself, my job. But it didn't work. First it was my Lieutenant and everybody clustered around and the don't worries, don't panic, we won't let this happen. Then the Captain, then my bargaining reps, and then my guys, we road dogs, my brothers, all. I could feel my eyes getting red and welling up and when I saw JD I knew I had to get the fuck out of there. The weakness coming not slowly but in waves that I could not control. I hit the door and didn't look back.

As soon as I called clear the salt water stung my cheeks in hot streams of devastation, disbelief. And just as soon I got a call and was thankful for at least a purpose. My phone blew up and I tried to ignore it because the love and support hurt even more than the terrible possibility of the meeting's news.

And of all days this was the one that they chose to get dinner in my bailiwick. I rolled through, stopped and parked. Looked at myself in the rear view and told myself to put on your game face, you have one hell of a battle ahead. All the while I talked to them and then later showed them my car I wondered how the hell I would ever be able to give them the news. I want to be just like you. I want to just go out and do what I'm meant to and now there might not even be that.

At a junction. Are you going to be strong enough? But I already know the answer. It's the waiting that is absolutely killing me. If I could just know what is going to happen, if I could just make a plan.

In the meantime there is prayer. God put me on this earth for a reason and I have to make good on it. Not like all the other names that are so often in red on my MDT screen.

St. Michael, guide me.

Ice and glass.

Plastic scraping on ice and glass and the sound of tires on a wet road. The world moving slowly awake and people digging out their cars from all of the night's ice and snow to snake listlessly towards work, or home, or yet another day of one foot in front of the other. We lay still and tangled, and for a moment I thought that if I was quiet enough and did not move that time would cease its constant push forward. The bed was warm and his scent lingered on a fortress that I made of pillows, greedy for every last piece.

Bourbon the color of amber, sweet and warm on the tongue. We circled each other like wolves and made an offering of our own vulnerability. A bittersweet tenderness that does not exist often between our kind. We vacillate between hunter and prey and sometimes the lines are so blurred that we exist in both roles at the same time. His eyes sparkle even in hotel darkness and the words were precipitated by a deep breath and a long hesitation. Yes? I say. Yes. Yes.

Once loosed we two flow like water through a new level of communication. As if every word, every touch, each heart beat contained some secret code necessary for a future mission, and once missed was gone forever, irretrievable. There is just never enough time.

Sometimes it's as if I have this break in perception where I am standing on the outside, looking in as it unfolds. Amazement and disbelief on my face. And I think of Emily and how much experience we have shared. Nature vs. Nurture. Sometimes I think that we are the same person. So much emotion in common.

And then it was early morning cold and my hand making the scraping noises on glass, digging myself out for the trek home. I pointed my car into a snowstorm and began the journey westward. At times the blizzard was so furious that I could not even see the road and I thought, how perfect. It is good to live near the precipice, to not be able to fool yourself out of the belief in its existence.

Scotch rambling.

The orbs of wine are winding blue and I let go of my perspective like jumping into the deep end of the pool with no goggles, no sight just sensation all over the body, the crushing weight of gravity more intense with each inch sinking lower and lower to the bottom. He held my hand as we watched the sun plummet into the grey western sky, more lonely even than waking with you already gone.

Too analytical as you find yourself wondering what in the hell you are doing to yourself as it all unfolds in front of you. The present moment always an event in the past that you can remove yourself from, you can never quite let go enough to be more than just the omniscient narrator of heart break and inevitability.

His stubble makes my face red and he laughs at me for being so fair-skinned. You are the Harts and the O'Sullivans and all of the lilting romanticism that entails. All we can hope for is to be honest with our selves even at the intersections of a cruel fate and all that could have been. There is no room for regret. That is the one truth that you will not let go of, despite everything else. There is no room for regret.

The long expanse of asphalt and highway leads you home again, to the house that glows warm and orange from the outside looking in. Pumpkins and cornstalks and warmth and acceptation inside. Always. And if there was a way I could tell you how much just your simple presence means to me, I would. But I have no words. We two sit on the cold leather and just take the other for granted. But in this omniscient moment know that I would be nothing were it not for you. When the world spins around me all chaos it is you that brings me back to my center, grounds me.

I am grateful for every moment that I live by your side.

The sound of autumn.

A long stretch of asphalt and too much time to complete the journey home, each western mile like a sigh passing between lovers, a silent communication more potent than language. The world this morning was blanketed in fog and cloud, making the highway the set of a play, where you see just enough of the scene to get the general idea of the world that waits beyond the curtains. The sun broke through the haze as I neared the expansive concrete that bridges highway to highway over the metro parks, America's only real art, as the surrealist's would say. It was early still and the angle cast every shadow forward, westward, and I chased the shade of my car until home. There is something undeniably lonely about a sunny day when all you want is rain, clouds, and for the weather to collapse the world to its lowest common denominator.

Worlds began and ended while we lay still, hanging on tightly, trying desperately to not let the future be a distraction from the present. His scent lingered on the sheets both mornings and I remained longer than I had intended, not wanting to miss a moment of it while I had it. We few, we happy few. I remind the child inside that she must hang on tightly to let go lightly.

The other day JD told me that he offers up prayers for me, in hopes that I will find the right one. He looks at me with eyes so much like my own and a part of me moved as if waking from a deep sleep. So much of this life is complicated beyond my ability to understand. What else can we do but offer up our faith and be assured that God's plan makes sense in a way that is beyond our ephemeral knowing.

I was sent a prayer that is so beautiful it makes my heart convulse.
I offer you all of me, all that I am and all that I am not. I offer you every good decision and every regrettable mistake, every great accomplishment and every missed opportunity, every divinely inspired gift and every unapplied talent, every success and every miserable failure. I offer you all joy and all heartache, every kindness and every bitterness to be forgotten, every twinkle in my eye and every tear flowing down my cheek, every great love and each lost or irrecoverable act of charity. I offer you every quiet reflective moment and all of the unneeded chaos around me, all things holy and good in me and all things in need of greater purification. I give you every joyful memory and every bitter foul pain, each future moment and every missed opportunity to love, every kind act and each regrettable harsh word, all meekness and humility within me and every misplaced prideful thought, every virtue and every weak vice, every laugh and all misery mixed with weeping. I give you every healthy breath and every weakness of mind and body, every attempt at chastity and every unworthy lustful thought, every restful repose and every anxious sleepless night. You can have all of me, the beauty that you've deposited deep within me and the emptiness of my faults. I love you and am yours completely. Amen.

The pride.

It's the way the smell of antiseptic violates the tender insides of your nose when you first break the threshold of a hospital. The beeping, the burning of fluorescent lights, the anonymous moans and sighs from rooms down the endless expanse of worn linoleum. It squeaks under shoes.

We found the room and my first thought was how small he looked in the bed, white blanket and gown which were not capable of keeping one warm enough. There were no chairs so we stood, awkwardly. We each tried to maintain a fumbling conversation, most of which went unheard and I could not help but keep thinking of the scene in Tombstone when Doc tells Wyatt not to come back anymore. If you ever had any feelings for me, leave now and don't come back. And I thought that 99 years was an inconceivable amount of time. Every now and then his whole body stiffened and his face grimaced under the weight of some unbearable pain. I eyed my father in my periphery and imagined what it would be like, what the emotions would be. My mind refused the image and so I went to the window, and looked out. The brick work Gotham-esque in its decadence. Now given way to decay, expansion, and a shoddy time-gone-by appearance.

As we left he looked at me and said, hey don't take any shit from those assholes on the street and laughed his dry nasal laugh that I remembered from when we were little children. The mind holding fast while the body lets out a long sigh, and subsides.

We went to the Irish Pub and had black-and-tans and remembered. The first beer came and he raised his glass and told me better enjoy it while we have it! And I offered up every ounce of gratefulness that I could muster. My heart like a freed balloon, floating up to the heavens, carried off by a wild and untamed wind. I countered with here's to a long life and we drank, for awhile, in silence.

There is a difference between regret and the surrender to inevitability. We laughed as we planned out what our futures would look like because they involved all of us as old crotchety types, armed to the teeth and wholly self-sufficient. Then he steered the bow of the truck into the waning sun and we made our trip back home. And in the silence of the ride back I took out my knife and carved a piece of the day to be encased in amber, and held onto forever.

And that's the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.

Those who hold the light

It comes in waves like the last hint of summer hidden on the trailing edge of each gust as we sat, cars off, in a parking lot illuminated by the moon, and by its light reflected off of the clouds. The whole world blue and distant and out of focus. I am having difficulty remembering what it is to accept kindness, with nothing else attached but the perfection of each slow moment. The drive home I catch myself thinking that I don't deserve these little pieces of tenderness. I wrack my brain to remember the deed I did to earn such a gift. Nothing comes.

At the hours we meet my mind works in pictures and I try to conjure up phrases to make the translation, but they come awkwardly and sometimes not at all. I have a lot of luggage, he tells me. And I picture him, Atlas, world upon strong but burdened shoulders. We are both so tired. I picture me as Athena as I catapult the world into the distant reaches of the galaxy, so that he could stand upright at last, even if only for a moment before gravity brings the weight back down on him.

Sometimes I know that I am a fool, a child playing at being an adult. It doesn't bother me, most of the time. Except when we make eye contact and I can see that there is a palpable sadness that is rooted in the soul, rooted to the very core. I have no words, my immaturity belies the depths to which that desperation moves me. He tells me that my blue eyes are piercing and I try to turn it off but I never can. So I look away. He tells me stories about all of his thoughts and I know that he has spent a lot of time thinking in those ways.

And then it is the rising sun and taillights in rear view mirrors. And before long, not even that.

To the ends of the earth, and beyond.

The sun slanted lazily in the crisp blue sky, subsiding into its autumnal slope lower and lower as the earth angles towards winter. It was freezing outside the night before, already the frost playing with my breath, leaving its mark on blades of grass and car windows. All things covered brightly with frozen dew, rounding corners and making the night appear soft, unfocused. The heat escaped from his car in waves and I leaned in to keep my hands warm, to keep from giving in to the cold.

We stood like that for over an hour, frozen in time, most of the conversation taking place between the spoken words in pauses and sighs. Held glances. And I laughed at myself for completing his sentence and he told me that he couldn't think right when I was around. And I laughed.

The winter will be long, spring even more so. I thought of JD and how I need to practice just offering it up more unconditionally. Driving home I realized that we will never have that moment back, not in the same way. A momentary sadness filled the empty spaces inside the car. My brain conjured up an image of Ranger, and of Arizona. My heart opened up and filled itself with the convulsive beauty of impermanence, I connected with that forgotten happiness. A perfect night because it was ephemeral, fleeting. Hang on tightly while you have it, and let go lightly when its gone.

I am so incredibly lucky.

Nothing better

It is funny how sometimes when you are thrown a curve ball, which you had no way of anticipating and no idea on how to handle, the body and mind turn mutinous and all that's left is reaction. A moving of the lizard brain deep within. You reach out, swing wildly, and to the utter amazement of nature and all the fates who are watching, make contact. Sometimes that's all a person can hope for, making contact.

It rains lately from 5am until the taillights reflect red off the wet pavement some hours later. The lazy breeze ushers the smell of copper and of cologne through open windows, exposed tenderness. You say the words I never knew were contained within such an unlikely frame. We talk about religion and fate and hope and the youthful optimism of endless possibility. The air is thick with the excitement of what could be, the sometimes perfection of waiting. We carry on even beyond the clock's insistence that it is time to go home, with full hearts to empty houses.

Wet pavement.

With the passing of our birthday came autumn heralding in with it the magic and beauty and mystery of yet another changing season, the world growing older. As my feet made contact with pavement I awoke slowly and slipped into an easy cadence of just moving forward. It rained, but only slightly, and was really more of a mist that slowly fell earthward, covering everything in a hazy wetness. The best weather for a run, in my completely biased opinion. The trail was covered with the early leaves of fall, orange and red and yellow, but mostly brown and fallen for the dryness of the summer. They crunched and crackled and broke into pieces under my feet.

The dampness of the air held thick and heavy the fragrance of the turning season. The last of the cut hay, burdened apple trees letting loose their fruit to the ground, the smell of cider and of woodsmoke. The trail led me past bonfires, farmers turning their fields, families not put-off by the rain, gathered under tarps and canopies, hanging on to the last of the sunlight before the cold forces the living world inside for the dark months of winter.

I rounded the halfway point and started the trek back. The trail went through a clearing far removed from the roads and the houses, and for a moment the whole of the earth was silent. A distant and lonely formation of wild geese flew overhead and one let out a solitary cry into the vast and gloomy sky. A reminder from an ancient world that beauty is not meted out in handfuls, it just is. The wind rustled through the grass and the wildflowers and the rain soaked my clothing. Mind gave way to body and I subsided into each breath, each footfall, each swing of each arm, and the way the rain stuck to my face and lingered on my eyelashes.

There is no meditation like running, and no perfection like going beyond what your mind will allow.

Steel yourself up, warriors!

I remember when I first read the words of the poem it was like the easing of tension when things fit into their right places. Dust shaken off. I love autumn for the high, clear blue skies, the cold just at the edge of the wind foreshadowing the bitterness to come, the pungency of the leaves decaying, all things subsiding into themselves to prepare for the harshness of the winter ahead. And so it is with us. We cleave ourselves of the baggage we accumulated during the fickle spring and unrelenting summer. Winter is not as kind and must be met sparsely and with unencumbered hearts. We begin the transit back into our selves, to find that old refuge and reconnect with the lonely and formidable strengths which, in its hopeful foolishness, spring put up on a shelf, and left forgotten.

That is all I have. All of our strength and courage are with you, our hands stretched out to wrench the luggage from your shoulders if you'd only give some sign.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Wild Geese (Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Word from the mark.

The streets last night were bright as dawn though it was still hours away from the rising of the sun. A full and lonely moon hung in the east like a Christmas ornament revealing the world in layers of blue that only the deepest and most remote part of the eye could acknowledge, and make sense of. A belabored run took me past houses that I realized I had never noticed before, the moon's luminescence revealing the remotest places that before I passed by, blind. A couple argued loudly on the stoop of a recessed tenement, a cat darted from behind a tree and across the road. Cars passed, students wound their way home.

Halfway to the halfway point and the clouds obscured the moon, a perfect halo of blue circling that hidden orb like when we were kids and used to sneak cigarettes on the deck off of my room in the late night. Sticks and leaves and other detritus from the storm littered the path I took and the asphalt responded to each footfall with a wary and suspicious sigh. As if it knew better.

Past the house, finally, where my grandmother used to live. The sign next to the door still welcoming guests that hadn't been around to call for over a decade. The memory of my ancestors eviscerated by the wild pack of wolves that is this life, their bones turned to ash and left to the wind. To scatter and not to rest. Their story my burden, as if by keeping the heritage alive in my heart I could call upon their strength and fortitude when my own wanes. A nod to my childish belief in such a system of interconnectedness via moral code as I sprinted to the finish, to our door.

I turned the corner and waited but you didn't come. Foolish maybe for me to think that you would. The wolf subsided into the loneliness of it all and once the letting-go was done felt again at ease. I will take the plain south, through the barren snow field towards the crest of mountains with no name, just always out of reach. When I was a child I used to look at the thick stands of trees in the distance, at the far reaches of the plowed fields we'd pass in the car headed to wherever we were going. I would fantasize about opening the door the next time my father stopped and running without stopping until I reached the trees, and then running still. As if there would be life waiting for me somewhere out there devoid of the modern complications, natural, something that I could make sense of. And so it is.

We fit between the raindrops.

The moment came at last and I watched it pass and go by as if the me it involved was just a character in some other person's omniscient version of reality. As if I could be at the same actor and director, as if life can be manipulated in such a way. He leaned out of his window and the cars passing down the road slowed in deference to the fleetingness of our exchange. Small talk. Inside jokes. Laughter and blue eyes, small for his face, I remember thinking, but endearing.

He released me with the standard, be careful, be safe, be smart, and I waved it off as I usually do, saying that I always am. He looked at me and, me being too much of the wolf to give in first, I could not look away. I would hate it, I mean, I would be really upset if anything were to happen to you or if you were to get hurt because I really like you. You know, I'm fond of you. A lot. With stutter-steps and awkward pauses filled with laughter it came out like a sighted person fumbling through the dark towards the exit. I watched the taillights until the red no longer reflected off the grey and dismal street.

Inside I was vapor carried off by the rain and what was left was just reaction, and the ability to do my job. What has happened? I fell into something and I should reach for my flashlight and have a good look around. Instead I light candles and reflect upon how sometimes it is better to just wait and see what comes.

You help me find it.

I wore the shirt until the last lingering scent was gone and what remained was the salty crust of sweat and heat and the memory of it. The room a shambles as I stretched beneath a single ray streaming in through an open window, the waning sun's earliest sentinel of autumn to come. Outside children laughed in the street as they made their way home from school and the wind rustled dry leaves off the branches of the two big maple trees. The simple perfection of things falling into place for even just a moment.

Later the calculated exchanges were endearing for their transparency. The roles that we can play for each other, the slots that we can fill. And I wondered, can there be weakness between our kind? Can the hunter make himself vulnerable enough to put up his bow for even just one embrace? The answers come slowly and in measured doses. We both fumble in the dark.

At the meeting an old familiar face told me in all seriousness that the most important thing he learned came from my father when he said, life is tough unless you weaken and I knew instantly that it wasn't true. Later I asked my father and he laughed and said that he had no idea where the quote came from but he was not the source.

And I remembered something I heard once which is far more accurate, that the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. The words came to me easily and something that had been asleep for a long time stirred inside me as if to wake at last.

After awhile we walked through the darkened parking lot to the very back where I had left the car and as we went we passed who I can only refer to as orange pants now and seeing him I instantly felt a sacred kinship to my father. I pushed him playfully and then pulled him close to me. We are not the ones they speak of who will be broken. At home the exchanges between we two hunters continued and the fire within me again stirred, each word a billows stoking the glowing coals. There is a balance between strength and weakness, a line which separates the tenderness and the harshness of the world. There is a way to carry sorrow beautifully and to be constantly awestruck by the goodness of what can be contained in one single moment of this life.