These Waters Are My Sky

It is fall. It used to be my very favorite season. The perfectly clear air; the cool crisp mornings & warmish afternoon sunlight; the way the horses bucked.

I think too much now about winter and being cold. I go to bed because I can't seem to get warm. I spend sunny days in the kitchen instead of on the back of a horse. I like the kitchen, I do, but I like the back of a horse better.

The other night the moon had two circles around it, the outer one blue with the ice crystals in the night air. This morning I took note of the perfectly clear air, the few golden and brown leaves still on trees while the most of them made a new and noisy shag carpet for the woods, the unrelenting green of the pines, the faraway blue of the sky with the pillow clouds floating by. I took my coffee on a log in the sun. I thought of everyone I have ever loved.



It is fall and it is my favorite season.

I remember seeing that moon from my childhood bedroom. I dreamed. I woke up. I didn't remember. I remember now but I'm not sure which is the dream. I am in touch with both sides of the rent in my life, the before and the after. Is one dreaming? Is one awake? All is illusion, a stage play.

I pray to take myself to the rapids, to look at something as real and hard and dangerous as Lava Falls, from the high point on its north bank and then dare get in that boat and ride that tongue into where the river falls so precipitously that you can't see it at all but only hear it roar. "Here we go," the boatmen would say every time.

And then I think, is that not exactly what family is? Family and farm? Husband and kids and the life you build together? And when I ask the question twice I hear the roar of the rapids, reduced in drought to the trickle of the back creek. The roar remains in my ears.

"Here we go," is exactly what husband to be said to me on our wedding day.

It is fall and it is my favorite season. There's got to be a buck somewhere.