Bone Music

1 Last night dinner with four couples points out the difficulties in living together and apart. Even the son of a wealthy doctor, disdainful of inebriates more artificial than the moon, full, full of joy for humanity and life suffers deepening depressions like the dark outside a lamplight. It was a good restaurant expensive but comfortable in the alternate life-style way the cook was a hairy talented clown and we clowned though beneath each facade was turmoil and decay. We lay beside each other like bones in a boneyard and find joy (I do anyway) in the bone dance to bone music. 2 Without a thought for slash fuel or deer, the mist deepens and deteriorates upon the mountain. The mountain completely unaware of its greenness. The ice is centuries old. A red-tailed hawk floats above the unit observes what small mammals, birds are in the clearcut Awaits the moment to strike or fades away almost silent as the mist. I dream of it, though I am awake among my co-workers, the bullet system zinging cut logs down to the road, firewood. 3 Pardon me you mountains for coming to the edge without mystical knowledge or belief, only love and wrinkled eyes for the women and men who light the fires and wield the chain saws, drive the cat, swing the ax, I completely laugh among them like a god yes, although my face is a mask of hate and pain, what god does not come to this field of flowers out of fear and confusion and chains product of the hot anvil and hot engine of human history. This duality, these arm-breaking dualities this volcanic eruption erupting from some confluence of beheaded forces, one powerful with eternity, one blinding with intensity, meet and in the middle is me like a husband and wife fighting like two dogs fighting but not biting hard life bests my best synthesis of it and I begin to pray, hard to believe I kneel woefully and pray for a happy combination of sun and mist and sometimes man’s destruction.