Blog

As a boy I would sleep summer months in the attic with my Papa. If the night air was cool enough, we would shut off the window fan and listen to the night. My eyelids stretched open to capacity as if to aid my ears. The quiet was sugar; it was pure.

My children and grandchildren will never have that easy offering for their souls. They will have to purposefully travel to highway-free, non-towered spaces to lay awake with the dark as my son once did on a trek in the Rockies…

Somewhere he sleeps,

or tries to.

The man who is mostly trunk

created to contain a

barrel of tears for

those near him.

And his young wife waits.

Entertaining herself with

those second to him.

And glad.

As one who is patient

with friends at Baggage Claim,

knowing he will show

to lay hand on

what is only his.

Meanwhile he sleeps,

or tries to.

Under a midnight sky white

with the electric salt

of God.

Astounded that he is loved,

one so prone to wander

in lust and pride.

His first son’s fate

rests on his return

or his neglect.

Love or loneliness press

tears to the Colorado sky.

Without limbs to reach,

the wetness turns left. And right.

And falls southward

into fleshy saucers.

As he tries to sleep.

I tell you this memory as I sit in the last fields of Ardrossan. Without words my wife and I seek the last drops of silence… she with paintbrush in hand and me with the written word. We all know the steady hum that, over a lifetime or two, rises to replace what Papa knew. And the warning chime reminds us all that the mechanized Caterpillar will have the final say.

But still, humbly, the silence lingers; by the disappearing songbird possessed by her nonstop assignment to feed and be fed. And by her endless quest to love and be loved, she ignores the rising hum... or has eye fixed on her larger mission. And by the absence of spoken words, Kathie and I contribute to and create the quiet. In so doing we both subtract and give ourselves to a place that fades.

As it gives itself to us.