Drinking at 4am
A poem
Some dark oil swirled atop my wine
And curled itself into a foetus
A psychedelic mandala
An embrace too intimate to name
The paintings made of curdling substrate and colour - oil and water? vinegar? – that my father made with me and I forgot.
Some sky remade itself across the surface.
And the dazzle of the kitchen lights
Confounded in it or my eyes,
It settled once more and lay, awaiting motion.
This is a poem I wrote some time ago and which I send out now, as its texture is pertinent.
I wanted to thank you all for the support and care you have shown for my own and Fran’s work over the last two years. We are putting together another normal, standardized, death poetry free edition of Walking With Goats. There are so many things I want to write about though, and some of them are of unwieldy shape, much larger than this format allows. Here, next, I will write about the future, with as much space for healing as I can create.
And of course, there will be goat babies soon - and for that news there’s no better home.
With love to you all, and to the universe.
R
Almost a month after reading this, I am still haunted by the image of the oil swirled stop your glass of wine. I walk my 11 yr old, 100+ lb hound mutt down to the tidal creek every morning— who am I kidding, he walks me— and, just for a moment or two, look for mullet under the tiny eddies and swirls. Woody’s getting old—even faster than I am.