On Leaving

It is late June. Puffy white clouds perch motionless in the sky. Kali has come back from Africa. We've said goodbye to nearly everybody and then said it again. On Wednesday we leave for North Carolina, which I see as the true beginning of our trip.

I wonder how it will go. Is it even adventurous? Everyone knows someone who's done it before. And yet, for us, it is difficult and unprecedented.

(Once, I cared less. But then I became more well-adjusted, calmer, some might say happier. And somehow society forced its way inside, and here it is in my head, intoning intoning intoning. How now can I access that uncut, fragile, glittering youth who had plunged her fists deep into the world's muckety muck? Thoughtlessly discarded, she stands forlorn, watching me, half a decade of dust between us.)

* * * * *

Three birds on our patio waiting, wondering where the plants have gone. Two take off but one remains in baffled wonderment. And then she too on the wing, away.