It is a new year;
it is the same old season. We tear a page off the calendar; we don't change anything. The light comes a little bit earlier; it stays a little bit longer. Every night the moon dallies, takes its sweet time coming up. It is higher and higher in the sky when I rise; soon again we'll have a day-time moon. The moon - that chunk of rock we care so much about. Because it's ours.
As I go north and south and east and west from here, living as the vagabond in the middle, the shape of the sky will keep changing. Stars will stick to different parts of the dark dome. The sun will rise and set at different times in seemingly different places. Everything is relative, except our eternal middle western endurance, our doggedness. This is not relative at all, but absolute, that endurance.
I step outside to a cold morning. There is sunlight and frost on everything. All the trees look as if someone has spray-painted them white. A nice effect, not over-done. Such a morning, such a day.
I put the car in gear and I'm underway.
Oh! the sun is south. I haven't thought recently about how far it has been moving off true east. It could not be much farther off.
At the cemetery, the flag hangs dead against the flag pole.
Three crows along Highway north out of Fairwater take off 1, 2, 3 - an offbeat between each lifting.
Story, yes. There must be story, but there must also be poetry, passion, a fierce hold on what we are and what we've got.
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