Trees Or Car Ride: Upstate New York

Dark bark ink shaking hands thoughts into thick cobwebs speeding by in the cold, in the car, from the window---the forest in naked layers, bared and hiding both. Everything runs together at this speed, angled rain and rugged roots. But clean golden field red house chimney, brief silence, in the swirl of sticks and rivers.

"But you see, life is not like that at all; life is not permanent. Like the leaves that fall from a tree, all things are impermanent, nothing endures; there is always change and death. Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky, how beautiful it is? All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness there is a poem, there is a song. Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring. When the spring comes it again fills the tree with the music of many leaves, which in due season fall and are blown away; and that is the way of life."

Think On These Things, p. 140, Krishnamurti

Why?

The cash total on the register this evening:
$1108.94.

11/08. 9/4.

Why?
Why did I look at the total today, for the first time ever, of all days to look, of all numbers to find, and those few pennies that did it...

I'll never understand. These patterns, coincidences, appear and vanish like quick dark laughter, and there I am, reminded all over again, startled, and lonely.

Jewels

I want you in old jewels. Your fingers, your neck, the hollow of your collarbones, the bumps of your wrists, the soft useless flesh of your ear lobes.

Take what's been patient in the earth, in the sea, unthinking heat compressing nothing into kaleidoscopes, fragments of light fanning in the dirt like snowflakes, fanning buds like arteries, nutrient-rich chunks, rubies, pearls, diamonds, liquid streams silver, gold.

And the hours of too-human work, the tools and eyes and minutes, straining tight, all heat and carve, heat and carve, etch and set. Father to son, fathers to sons, lockets and rings, bracelets, crowns. Quiet pieces, worlds alone, living through dents and dead owners, thieves and gutters. Living through dust.

But your skin, creased with lines and pores, is mortal-soft. Fleck it in heavy gems, before it's gone. Weight of jewels, crowns for every part, nothing too heavy for you, nothing to overwhelm those eyes dug from somewhere I still wonder on long dark nights.

Knowing