Undulatus asperatus

I drove down Magnolia for the last time in the late afternoon of September’s end, and I took a walk down all the paths that once lead me to you. It had been one day since we’d talked, four days since we’d actually spoken, and twice that since we had really heard each other. The truth turns as easy as the rounds of sun I followed through Caribou open space with a hit of L and banana chips, and mid-afternoon in an Aspen tree I thought about the time you told me that those leaves looked like they were winking. Clouds came then; do you know they recently classified a new formation? They realized there was no word for the ominous draft clouds that always dissipates, and so undulatus asperatus was born: “ agitated waves “  these are the storms we think we prophesize, though they never come. I’m painting golden leaves in the grass when I realize you probably haven’t heard of this, and that I hope I get to tell you. Now the sky undulates, it is early evening, and you and I are twenty-two holding hands on the path to the Caribou Ranch barn, my hair is the longest it’s been all summer and a photo is taken, later it is painted into a watercolor. Later then the painting is lost. My hand aches because it’s empty and likes being held and I remember how well the painting depicted the way you walk. I cringe from crows, you all well know this, and just then at sunset I heard one laughing at me. She said time sweet sister you scared little thing, your angst is vicious your soul subdued you wait for him and time is your master, time is your lover, time is the injured man who wants to be yours as you are for him.

For now at least I let time travel in my front seat as I take the backroads to the west side of Magnolia.  It’s dark and I plan to drive the length of it and absorb the turns and thoughts and glimpses that used to be the woven fabric of my most textured twenties. This is the time we were we. I do not pass Ponderosa Way,  I turn into it, and follow the breath as she folds herself into my lap and I find myself on our old porch. Midnight wraps around the room we once shared and I glimpse the past shadows of us curled up in an abalone shell. The black crow winks, glints. You are standing four years ahead and forty miles away and clouded in what feels obtuse to me, I do not know this man, but here is his soul and the turn of his neck and his gray pajama pants in a pocket in my lungs, I am breathing him in (now and always). I am shaking at the steering wheel without your hand on my thigh, our old road, but then morning breaks and I find myself sunning on a black smooth stone, I am topless, I am softened, you are gone and I am glad.