Mist and a thankyou sweet wren

The mist is not yellow but it is a white enveloping mist.  A purity in the reflection of all colors and I drive into it.  I drive into it on Thursday and on Tuesday, cresting the top of the point at which the 520 starts to merge with the I-5.  The birds on the water and the mist somehow I would like to be swallowed.  Somehow the mist is a door and the cars that enter it are elsewhere—a place that is the mist itself and the water and the double crested cormorants on their bouys, the pied billed grebes.

Heart’s/work is normal, harsh and sweet

On my run I saw a Bewick’s wren.

I followed the wren three miles or more/Three miles or more three miles or more

I’ve written before about wrens and the annual hunt

I have a little box under me arm/A penny or tuppence would do it no harm

I’ve been a bit down.  I felt like that little wren opened me back up.  I had to search for it, I heard it and saw it fly over to the brush and then, by dint of a perseverance that perplexed my dog, I saw it.

a penny to bury the wren

The mist was not a door, over the crest and down the curve were the cars going south and, on the other side, the cars going north.

The door was the wren.

My heart…a mess in my fingers

In the rain in the snow the rain the snow

*******

Quotes are from  Jean Valentine, the song of the Wrenboys and Julie Carr.

 

Pánico, Primero

I was afraid.  I was fear.  I am nervous, anxious.  I am disquiet.

 Are they dragging away the sky?

I was panic.  I am sometimes panic.

So many lists that keep growing, and are saddening

grief

And what exactly ties panic to grief?  I don’t know only that they tied. 

How can you wait for grace, how could you know that it was coming

I never used to have panic attacks but I have them now.  They started in November.  I can tell you the date but then you’d know too much. 

I am hungry for my own heart

One upon a time the sky turned yellow and everything grey closed in on me and all I could do was shake.  But no one seemed to notice although the crowds were there and I was in the town square with the bonfire raging behind me.

One never does solve what it is about watching fires, really

This wasn’t how it happened but it is yellow and a suffocating yellowish grey.  The polluted orange sky. 

there’s only trauma and help or harm in it the black sap rotten knot

I was in stocks but I could not see anyone, I was blindfolded but she whispered to me what was happening.  She whispered to me all my sins and transgressions.  The sheriff and the judge stood near.  I felt them but they were silent.  The sky was yellow and my eyes were filled with grey.  I breathed but could not, and my ears were filled with a roar. 

evil is how we love

No you cannot run.  No you cannot crawl under a table, a couch, a low cabinet.  No you may not hit, nor pinch, nor bite, nor throw stones. 

this burdened pear tree we love

Or rather, I may do none of these things, she’ll do them all and throw all manner of horrible refuse.  In these stocks I have to feel it, smell it, even taste it but my hands are trapped my legs are bound. 

we are the people,

those people shuffling across the lawn

And anyway

a metal provides a hell river

It was not that but it was.  I’m here, there are no stocks but there are the stocks of the mind and I cannot run nor fight.  I’ll shake and my heart will race and I will cry in the yellow and the grey and I will want to sleep because there is nothing left but I will not be able to.  And the morning will come.

  after the trip to hell

keep moving

Quotes are by Jean Valentine, Aaron McCollough, David Markson