New Old Light

Black crow on the barbed wire asks: were you falling or flying? Around 4 p.m., the bruising sky begins to spread. Afternoon leaves as quickly as it does on the Serengeti. On the equator, sun up is at 6 a.m. and sundown at 6 p.m. – sharp. There is no negotiation.

I watch every dawn these days. Shadows rise from the last syllables of night and spread across rooftops, church steeples and fields of snow. Faint rabbit tracks spoke outward from evergreen bushes in the new, old light and the dog's breath hangs longer in the air. Ice-fallen branches send out prismatic missionaries into this wordless world. Something I've always known is coming home to roost.

At M.'s, a way of being in the world, of which I have only secretly dreamed, manifested in front of me, down to the most minute detail. Her dwelling is a portal to a truth I never dared to claim. Her dogs draped themselves across my legs and chest and I could feel the heartbeat of the entire cosmos. I want to be the woman who has need of a pocket knife or a doorless shower with plants all around it or a wood-burning stove in the middle of the room.

In the waiting room, setting light slants across the backs of uncomfortable chairs. A few ornamental trees just outside of the windows have strings of white lights curling around the skinny trunks and up into bare branches. Every one in the room, with the exception of a rogue knitter, is on their cell phones, swiping away nerves or killing time. When K was taken back for surgery it was very hard to ignore the vibration of chattel directed to line up, be processed, and pushed through at a hurried pace. There is another way to heal, no?