ONE: SOMETIMES THE SKY AND A WOLF LIKE A VISION

Sometimes the sky turns mauve and can have streaks of white. It was like that, and I am not certain whether it was an Indian summer or late springtime that had become unseasonably warm. Beside a ravine I walked, hidden from the sky save for the times when spaces opened between trees. A wolf ran past, grey, large, in the other direction and just in a bit from the path. He or she was travelling beside the water’s edge. It was only a second that I saw it for. What was it doing there? I didn’t know. And what did it mean? What does a wolf mean? I paused, and looked back. Unlike a scampering and mangy coyote I once saw, coy, almost apologizing for itself, the wolf was incredibly quick. It was like a vision but it was not a vision. Not unless you obscure boundaries and call everything a vision. I wanted to see it, call it ‘him,’ but he was gone. As I walked I could not discern his meaning.

TWO: INDIAN SUMMER INTERSECTIONS

Lately I have been worried about something. I found a place, a secret opening at the outskirts of a forest. Not one soul have I come across yet. I take the dogs there sometimes. About a half hour in, past old growth Oaks and quiet soft Pines and others, there is an intersection in the wood. You can go one of three ways. Four, if you count the option of doubling back to where you came from. I went to the right the first time, and found this place- absolutely wonderful. There are a few acres of grass where a person can think and roam, where canines can run, sniff, roll, sit, explore. But the second time is what got me worried. The second time I took the path straight ahead. My logic was that it would loop up with the wide open fields I had discovered the first time. So I went down a sheltered summit that a broken tree blocked. Then I went around some dense bushes. Still it seemed like a path. But it didn’t loop up. I definitely heard then an animal, much larger than a squirrel, startle and then run off. I went back and cut my losses. Once in the fields, I came across a sandy area with large paw prints and a dead bird. Now, I wonder, - is there a mountain lion or something else there? I am concerned.

THREE: BY SOUTH OCEAN BLVD

I was thinking that somewhere far off an ocean must roar. But not with the sounds of the tides alone. It must roar with colors, - the hues of the water sometimes green and sometimes blue but more often than not a mixture of the two. Things jostle and jockey for position, and it’s these two colors that definitely make for interesting swirls, textures, and so on. I am not so much for the color red. Too flashy. I would even go so far as to say it is more often than not a vulgar color. Things that are red include blood and sports cars and fast-food signs. No, green and blue are the colors for me. Maybe a light orange. Who knows? But the sea. The sea must be there, and it is sour grapes I guess that is part of why I think of it. Someone else is looking from a balcony or even better, - from the ground, at verdant palm leaves getting kissed by the salty breeze. Ah. And the ocean provides this gestalt that is full of prowess. That is not to mention all of the things in there to ponder. I can hardly even go on to think about the piers at dusk,-say, - one on each side of those palms, - to the north a few miles, and to the south. Which one would I go to? Which one would we go to? The one to the North has a lighthouse. That all has its own mystery. Good, yes. But I think the one to the South should be chosen. Why? I don’t know. There are abandoned catamarans we could sit and rest on. There is a long bungalow of a restaurant with lights that cast a certain glow that reach out to the sand at night. It must be there. It must still be there. In fact I know that it is.

FOUR: THE DREAM OF THE FALLEN CITIES

That was a long ago dream. There was another in the dream and it was a dream of a fallen city at night. There had been some problem, - well, problem to say the least. The city was in ashes and there were large machines, like malevolent robots of some sort, roaming about. The other person in the dream told me to get down when I tried to get up and look around. So odd, so impossibly odd and peculiar. I didn’t know what was what, and had no context, no point of reference. The other seemed to know, and was nice enough. I mean, the end of the world or civilization is not a time to worry about niceties but still, he seemed kind. There are many who are not and I have seen those two, in dreams and in waking reality. So, there was the feeling of orange. I am just reporting, you know? Why there was orange I don’t know. It felt real, not like a dream, but we need to use language. It always stayed with me. Jung calls them, I forget the tern, but defines a type of dream that stays always in memory for its impression, for its deep result. It was like that for sure. I wonder if I shall ever meet him. Maybe it is in a past life. Perhaps it is in a future life. Or, it could be an alternate time-line that was avoided. How is one to know now, though everything happens in the same timeless-time? That dream was long ago, and I suppose there were others, I know there were others.

FIVE: A RAVINE IS A WORLD

And they stopped here or there. Sometimes they had a bit of water. It didn’t take much for them to satisfy their thirst. As for satiation, they were not food motivated and only ate as much as they needed. God. What a creation. Where, I wondered sometimes, did they come from? Black and brown the one, and the other grey and white. They dash around. What will the first snowfall look like? Maybe it stays away so long so we can forget and then renew some faith. What would the places look like at night, with the moon as the only light to show the way? The cities sleep save for a few vehicles. Even the haughty and prideful ones have to rest. Then, the rabbit or the fox might go across those places. Once I saw a family of foxes come right up to the beginnings of the ravines where the suburban grates caught the rainwater, the effluent run-off from storms. They paused and looked at me, a friend, and the leader, perhaps the mother, did an energy reading. Fine. They looked around some. Then receded into the night again. I know the way. It’s where the trees used to be small and the garter snakes came out in the rain, disturbed. They bit that guy once, no? Where is he now? He was a good sort. So many things happened in and around there. Comic trading. The yellow police cars getting the teenagers to dump out their beer. But it was the storms that were the thing. I watched them from the window where the phantom had come in once for help. Black wrought iron gates, purple plum trees and a sour cherry tree. It’s all still there, it’s all still standing. But I don’t know what it is like there when a heavy storm announces itself to the environs. No, it’s all just memories. When the months where rain is allowed go away, the snow must blanket, nestle, and keep the grounds in a certain glow. Each branch and every feral shrub. All the small bridges and the old buildings up the way. Their rooftops watch the firmament let its story-poem of white come to marry everything. And the foxes…the foxes must see and hear the astute and heavy silence of all of that. Yes the foxes know all about the middle of wintry nights.

SIX: AUTUMNAL AND OTHER

Autumnal as she goes. And what would make you think of the autumnal hues and all the rest? Well, the months themselves. It’s too bright and hot in the days for a long time, but the season does arrive. Tardy, yes, but we will excuse such a small thing because of how much we love and adore you. Fall sacrosanct like the Eastertide or a true marriage. Thank God for the seasons, the one thinks, because we did not have enough gumption and creativity ourselves. She with her fallen leaves has brought us back to our soul. Now, we will think of old lakes and families, in simpler times, when there was some incredibly powerful presence- of nothing, of God, of possibility. And everything came out from there, continually. We were, as romantic as it may sound, in God, in the Source, in the timeless place out of which all things come. We did not have a word for the perennial philosophy. We did know too well our own religion so certainly knew nothing of the Vedas and so on. But this proves their truth. This proves God and eternity to all. How? Because we were in it before there was a name for it and even before any others spoke of it. But…the hardships to come. Hard people and places, circumstances, pitfalls, and darkness. Yet there is something they cannot take, because the autumn has come again and we are alive, witness, seeing, sensing. There are her trees strewn on the fields and the cold waters run themselves as if with a motor over the river tumbled stones. We can’t say it like George Elliot or some others, - but we can say it nevertheless- our two cents, and it is that the good cold comes in the night and world pushes itself onwards. Someone else will by aluminum boats, in coats, and feel the lake water splash up as the engine goes. Look back over there to the reds, yellows, and fading greens. It’s a time of good death. The flowing click clock of the stars. Blink on and off. The  branches curl just a bit, like when we bring our shoulders up just so and complain lightly and good heartedly that ‘its cold out.’ Its fine and right and the way of things. The land turns barren and takes away juicy fruit and verdant stories. It only offers itself as a small simple poem. People don’t care for much for such things, caught up in the hoopla of paths and the so-called glory of what is thought to be good and well. But…we love the lonesome October fields, - the five line poem saying the same thing. I am here. I am here. I am here. I am here even in slumber because my slumber is not actual death nor is there such a thing. I am here.

SEVEN: A DECADE IDEAL

That was an old place where there was a K-Mart and a burger joint. It wasn’t sketchy, dangerous, but was just right. The richies got a hold of it and put gates up, made boutiques. Once you see a boutique, well, more than one, that is the beginning of the end or at least a marker that a change in collar color is happening. God, how it went over the top. To show off is one thing, sure, - most everyone is guilty of it at one time or another…but now…it’s like a joke but you aren’t really supposed to laugh. Well, they won’t look at you, and sometimes the men wear scarves. Ain’t no scuffs on the shoes. If you sing a song of back in the day, you are alone with your song, but you gotta sing it anyhow. We went down there and the coolest movie theatre (which they promptly got rid of in the takeover), was down some escalators. It was like a world within a world. Mid-eighties. Summer or winter wouldn’t matter. It was all great. They used to have these little trees that grew in the middle of the place. Not anymore, - just plastic replicas and a lot of restaurant signs whose names can’t be pronounced. Not by me anyways. Then, though, - the plaid shirts and the popcorn. The atmosphere. In the spring before the rains everything looked dirty outside and it yet it was beautiful. The old running track and Van Morrison songs played somehow out of a speaker. The air-brakes on the bus would sound and it was an urban sunset mixed with wires, clouds. Civilization but not overly civilized, and the ancient setting star.