Falling asleep with the fog crawling up, clouds rolling in from the gulf, that mist on the fine hairs of my arms looking down startling. We are at home here in this house and prayin ground, the mist treating us as a globe and going all around but never to the door. All of the fox holes and turtle holes and snake holes woke up with fog all around, instincts keeping them unworried, to be an animal must be mostly a strange dream. (To have spent so much time in the woods coming up, and pining for it the rest of the time, i can’t name very much and can’t understand how i never set out to know.)
Glad to have the memory of writing-it-down, it makes it almost appear as if time has gone by slower. The mist and fog has been enveloping and slowing. A man with a boat the other day told me about horn island, and said as if it was all clear & simple math - “yes, all of this fog, we are in a holding pattern waiting for the rain to come and break it, break into cold weather.” It feels just like that, a holding pattern. These time here a holding pattern, certainly, an animal dream and the fog is all around.
i couldn’t believe when i walked in (let me see if i can start again.)
all of these creatures are here, they leave their tunnel homes, they leave-their-leavings, you can tell. Their homes are dark and deep, pine bedded, muddy, always quiet. You could be staring up at the night sky by staring down into this earth. The tunnels through the grass, the saw grass, the underbrush, the roots. There is a tree here with roots crossed like a dozen hands and the tree (a young water oak) leans impossibly. It is still alive, limbs getting in where they can, this tree ain’t grew how it was supposed to and the other trees have no time now to move. Growing towards the light or storm bent or both. Some of these pine trees have their hips cocked and i wonder why.
These hidden creatures, Lord let me be a hidden creature. A possum at night unworried yet, slow and knowing. An armadillo blind in the day and especially at night among the flood lights. Let people know i lived a little while and somewhere among them but help me from being all seen.
(Tiny pink possum footed and armadillo shelled and hoot-owl-voiced but otherwise gone.)
(seen the storm coming last week. But it already happened. i seen this storm coming all day today. feel so care-free and safety netted we just go out walkin. Its hard to worry much when all your time is in your own hands.) We seen this rain comin. Been tasked with watchin. (took a wrong turn walking on the bridge peering into the fog and wound up back on government.)
the leaves fall as the moths in the light, racing carefully to the ground. Hoping nothing never gets old.
Leigh Anna Newell said the other day that “art is as a faithful friend,” and she is sure enough right on. But it also feels like my whole body. Taken for granted. Ever present. Susceptible to its private kinds of needs. (A faithful friend bound to hollering yowlering if forgotten.)
Seen that black snake in his snake hour, from a distance. We was out past turtle hour and before pelican hour. Couldn’t hardly believe the luck of it, providence placing that snake in the air to be seen. Too coiled up to come back down without careful thought. Perfect and testing the air with his tongue, brave enough to get close but not enough to reach out and feel. But by looking you could guess.