Satellite

A tangerine moon stares through the spruce trees as stars reveal themselves in the night sky, multiplying, first one or two then too many to count. And the coolness of the air... What person isn't overcome by this vastness, this space? There's no quantifying or qualifying what I see from my front porch. Then, a starlight like the others, moving steadily, interminably across the sky, so closely blending in, but for the linear projection, the controlled velocity, predictable in its human intention. It glides beneath--a soft tear in the fabric of the firmament.

Gone

Whatever it was is lost now to the low lying place behind the tamaracks. An object, a child, a feeling, that idol you worshipped and allowed to define you is buried in the peat preserved for another to find, identify and apportion themselves to.
It's like that, isn't it? So long as you know it's there and understand that it can't be rediscovered by you. You've buried it, but exhumation is no longer possible.
Reanimation is unnatural. The result is a dead wish, moldering on the edge of our desire, tender and soft and malignant.
You must make new and leave the anthropology to those more qualified. Return your shovel to the shed and just remember.

What is this?

What is this that we walk to desolate places and sit? Quiet, isolated places where the sea gulls scream or the wind whispers in the pines. Is it a taking stock somehow of our inner selves to see if it is well with our soul? Or do we wander around a store of fine gifts, examining, turning over in our minds of what we could have if we were willing to pay the price? Too often we gently replace each object on the shelf and move on.
But what if we didn't?
These questions by now are tired and shopworn, yet essential to be asked because it is the asking that may permit us to pay the price.