LIghtBright

To the Lady on the Train,

If I could light all the stars

let them burn bright through the day

and blaze the sky at night

I would paint them

in the shape of the hollow

that you leave in my bed

The Man in the Station

October escape

Angel,

The early October sky is a low flat grey and the rains have come. These rains are not the midsummer thunderstorms that roll over us at night with their suddenness and with flashes of blinding light and thunder tat approaches to shakes the windows and you feel as much in your chest as you hear. These are the cold and dreary  long wet that seems to soak into everything, including our souls. These are the rains that soak us into a melancholic torpor. It is dark and a cold wind blows outside while inside the furnace blows hot air and it all feels too close. It is dark and the sun cannot be seen in the sky and the clouds do not move and there is no escape except, well, there is no escape except to escape. 

Some will curl on the couch with a tea, a blanket and a book in the den like darkness of a living-room; a book spot-lighted, and there the mind may escape the drag of an October day. But in my own lazy restlessness, the need for a more distant escape calls. 

A loaded truck heading north on a two lane highway and every song reminds me of you. Even when you are not with me, I carry you still. In eight hours, two gas stations stops, and too many coffees my headlights light the final curve of a tree lined track and slope into a clearing behind the cabin. It is a moonless, starless pitch black night; the trees still dripping though the rain has stopped. I am soaked to the knees by the time I get my gear into the mudroom. 

I have arrived at a small cedar lined cabin set on a shoulder of rocky clearing next to a deep Canadian shield lake. The path winds down to the shore where a dock juts out into the ink dark lake, flat as glass.

Over the coming days I will build fires in the stove to dispel the chill. I will walk the woods, leaving only footprints on the hushed leaf littered earth. And I will drink strong coffee on the end of the dock to watch the sun rise and set and the stars and moon arch their way across the sky. I will skip stones across the skin of the water, a chain of ripples the only break to the mirror of the far shore. While I am alone, you are always with me; I cannot set you down.

Though the autumn rains still fall and there are grey days, the torpor has fallen from my limbs. Perhaps it is the chopping of wood or the quiet thrill of observing the changing forest, or the smell of lake, and earth, and trees that has restored me. Or perhaps it is just the change from the grey city that has allowed me to appreciate these cold grey days for what they truly are; a necessary part of the circling of the seasons, a readying for the winter to come. These days are the signal for us to take the time to prepare; to take the time for what is important.

Just me.