"October Road"

I offered both hands across the desk when he spoke about his diagnosis and treatment. The speed at which he grabbed them startled me, but the warmth and softness melted surprise to compassion. His eyes said see me clearly or not at all. He spoke about time on the streets, jail and the irony of getting clean only to have terminal cancer. At the center of a hurricane or a tornado is an eye; it is safe there if one can move with the storm. He showed us bullet and knife scars in the side of his torso and I thought of Jesus being stuck in the sides by soldiers.

Death and birth are the same thing. So easily we look birth in the face and yet, we struggle to gaze directly into death. To accept life is to accept death because they are two faces of the same flow. To know this is to end suffering. I will still cry at his funeral, which begs the question, what does it mean to know.

Flowers will blossom from our lips and the next generation of trees shall hold us tightly within their roots.

Assuredly we have reached the last of amenable weather.

October I love you.

Cardinals in surround sound. Black walnut trees drop nut pods from fifty feet high, crashing through branches and hitting the ground like baseball sized cannon balls. White-tailed deer lope and graze a stone's throw from the picnic table in Palmer Park.

Poetry meets Tarot meets tribe in the most holistic and loving way. How long I waited and yet, we were always here, together.

Apples, oatmeal, sunlight for breakfast; everything elongates unto ending time.