Bleak House

"The present moment can sometimes feel like a very bleak house to live in." ~Forest Wisdom

Yesterday some words came. I wrote them down. My apologies/thanks to Charles Dickens for stealing the title, although my use of it in no way resembles his. You may listen to the words below the text.


Bleak House
Me

There's a weathered old farmhouse
out on the county road, northeast of Luverne.
It stands out stark and alone on the
bare prairie, as so many like it all across
the central plains of the continent,
whether Saskatchewan or Kansas.
The white paint is peeling, the roof
needs new shingles, the outbuildings
show some disarray. And these all
actual subtle indicators,
mirroring the life within it.

It is dawn, and the farmer
awakes without alarm clock,
as he has done each day
for more than thirty years.
But this morning he does not arise,
put on his boots, and head out to the barn.

He drifts in and out of slumber,
and visions fill his dreams.
Visions of blizzards, snowdrifts,
and 40 below, of a sky so massive
it is a presence all its own,
and horizon...everywhere....
Done with sleep he continues
laying in the darkened bedroom
and thinks about a cup of coffee.

The last time he had coffee with her
was on a Saturday. They took
a drive up the interstate, and then
off on to smaller roads. They ended up
several counties from home.
And they stopped for pie and coffee
in a diner in a small town. He couldn't
even remember the name of the town.
He did remember staring out the window
of the diner, at a semi truck idling
in the parking lot, and the prairie
stretching endlessly, almost featureless,
massive sky. He remembered thinking,
"Why do we live here?" and a desire to
see forest and the ocean. He had
forgotten about that day. But many
thoughts came and went as he lie in bed,
all of them as ordinary as the cobweb
in the corner above the bedpost.

When she died he had taken her ashes
out to the mountains in Montana
where she had grown up. That was her wish.
"Scatter my ashes on that high ridge where
we picknicked that day whenwe were courting."
And so he did, camping alone
in the canyon the night before.

There was a moment, just after dawn:
there in the morning half-light of the canyon,
a Townsend's Solitaire called its high pitched "tew."
He felt his body and his footsteps as he climbed
the ridge...lifting and placing...it all became one....

In its way, it was not unlike the moment
this very morning, when rising from his bed at last,
he opened the living room curtains
for the first time in days. He couldn't
even remember when it had been.
When his eyes adjusted to the bright sunshine,
he stood naked in that moment,
staring at horizon...and massive blue sky.
And they were all one. And he knew not
if the moment was four seconds
or forty minutes.

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