A cold, harsh trail has led us to Grand Island Landing. We draw our coats tight with the remnant of the hope we cling to in the face of this blizzard. The strong kiss of November reaches for our sister; catches her in one swift embrace to scatter amongst all that brightly glimmers. She is winter.
An advancing tractor plows a furrow through the life of a Ford man; borrowed land that lays in a season of caregiving. I learn to wipe his brow, his mouth, his ass. I stand to rise with my husband beside his father, and with his wife we pray to our Father, to our Mother, to all the saints in the stone bright solid weeping as we break. Today is the feast of St. Joseph – the day after my birthday.
A broken shell scrapes at the bare and I bend to slip shoes on my feet. There is nothing empty here but all the time. All the time and stolen moments breathing. I wipe counters, wipe windows, wipe my hands across my thighs. How do you bear the rowing when the motions you’re going through fall short?
I sift these ordinary ways. The gritty mass fills my hands, fills my head with so much on my mind. I pour it through a sieve of mandolin strings. I pound away in black and white to remove the neat clichés and find the truer tone of gray.
A bridge leads north, connecting now to then across an expanse of inland seas. I take the pieces of the life I’m waking to and stoop to kneel at the base of all that’s there. It is night in my parent’s pole barn. I set the songs down hard, stirring up crickets and dust, breathing in my father’s DNA some 18 years still. He has come to me in all that echoes, weeping as we wake.
I sat next to a bonfire in the backyard, attempting to write a bio – something that continues to elude me. How DO you write about yourself? And why? So, I wrote this instead. It presented itself as the story behind the songs for Stone Bright Solid – V1. Or at least part of the story. What I’d like to know is…
What about this resonates with you and why? Where do you go to process life and what do you do to get a grip on it all?
I cry
Me too.