Dusk

The sun sets late here in the north, lingers like in your home country, like a reluctant end, the familiarity feels comforting. I sit on the back porch letting my skin get cold, a swirl of poetry and stories and truths running laps through my insides. You came to the country to see more clearly, and you cannot take it back now. Sometimes the things we find by opening the door to hidden closets is exactly the monsters we feared would be there waiting. 

The point is to turn the light on anyways, drag them out into the middle of the room, make them less fearful by revealing their edges. Every monster ends somewhere. 

Even you.

Hellgate Canyon

A warm breeze moves in from the east, unassuming, gentle. You see the remaining days trickle from your calendar, it feels too soon, too soon, all you ever wanted was more time. You plead with the Universe for more time, look at each blade of grass like you want to commit it to memory. 

Earlier, along the lazy river, drifting through statuesque Montana canyons, you remarked at how easy it is to laugh in the company of others, how light your heart after a day spent with friends. Driving back home to the empty cabin under big sky lightning, you thought, and yet, how easy to live without.

It's harder to fight an illness,
when it was made in your bones.

Earlies

Wake with a shock, late after too many false starts in the middle of the silent nights. Strange dreams of holiday shopping, new apartments, and a climb across peaceful, icy waters bounce around your head like ping pong balls while you wait for the coffee to steep. 

a full writing day

The gift trickles across your eyebrows without knowing quite where to land. The coffee begins to sink in, remind you of the magic feeling when a page is blank, a day is new, an everything is possible. 

You sit down in front of the word processor, greet it like an old friend. Feel like a stranger to it, but at once that you've known each other your whole life. 

It feels like home. And you are ready to come back to it.

Ridge View

At the top of the switchbacks, where the mountain ridge peaks and the valleys spread in three directions, Big Sky making a name for itself without even trying, stood a lone picnic table. I climbed the last incline, through a sea of gold, long grass waving in the wind. Sat on the picnic table and looked out over the valley, searching for answers among the rolling hills, the cast fields, the cars in miniature making their way across the highway. 

It's always in silence that the answers come. I saw the core of what it is to be human, the core of what it is to be me, and how the two don't seem to intersect as much as they should.

The insight didn't seem so hard to swallow, more like getting glasses after the world was blurry for years. Like a psychic only telling you things you already know.

I took my core back down the mountainside. Made my way back to the little cabin in the valley. Sat in silence, holding the core in the palm of my hand, 

and wondering where it goes now.

I'd Forgotten How It Goes

I wake early in the cold morning, with just the slightest hint of magic across my eyelids, like sensing the season's first snow fall before you look out the window. Step out into the quiet cabin, where what remains of my life sits immobile, a still life painting in the mountains. Here is the typewriter, with a half written poem in its jaws. Here is the piano, preparing for a wedding, piles of paper trying to make sense of your literary ambitions. 

He summons you to work, and you cannot quite tell what's getting in your way, until the coffee sinks into your chest and reminds you of feelings long lost. You want to be writing, it whispers to you, the words are ready. 

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.

You arrived at the doorstep
of everything you were hoping you would find

and all you have to do is walk through.

Notes on Home

Shake out of a dream, your pulse high and your mind elsewhere. Returning to Earth takes longer when you were just light years away. The western wilderness remains steadfast outside your window, quiet in an early morning breeze, as the sun climbs the mountainside behind the house. A new day, a blank slate. You see the end of the road approaching, want desperately to find the metaphor that will shift you into a higher gear. Want to feel the deadline energy make you savor each moment.

Images of New York came across the screen last night, simple, sweet and quintessentially home. They asked if I miss the city, and when I said no, it was clear they heard what they wanted in the answer. But not missing it doesn't mean never wanting to go back. 

No, filled me with such joy. 

Because not missing New York now, means it is still a home I take for granted. 

Not missing New York now, means it has not been taken from me. 

I saw those images on the screen, and all I felt was peace.

Sunset Park

On the drive home, the sun set behind me, setting the grassy knolls aflame in bright washes of yellow. Remains of clouds become homing beacons, dotting the sky with bright lights and sharp edges. Turn off the highway to the small country road, feel it in your gut, it's time to pull over. 

Find the western horizon aflame, impossibly stretched across the endless miles of sky, pink feathers around the edges and a sliver of moon on the periwinkle ends. The air smelling of grass, cows, summer. Back in the car, see the first black bear of the trip, pausing as I pass, dusk settled by the time I reach the little cabin. The insight of the evening not to forget all the things you are already doing right, that are already going well. It's so easy to see the things not yet accomplished. 

But you've already seen a sunset the kind that takes your breath away, already seen a black bear, a night sky, already felt the afternoon breeze across your shoulders. You've already discovered a new story in the melee of your mind. 

There is much left to do. But oh, how many stars you hold already in your hands.