Pretty hot day yesterday. Today the smoke is blocking out the sun, keeping it cool. Pretty surreal how fires hundreds of miles away can significantly affect the local climate. Like a butterfly flapping on the other side of the earth, giving me lung disease. Outcome is the same, anyhow. I’m coughing up coarse red phlegm but don’t blame the cigarettes today, but also don’t feel much like lighting up. I get breathers from the cancer sticks, but this envelops and pervades. Will I asphyxiate by smoke or plague first?

It’s been a while since I’ve heard any gunshots. I’ll never miss them, but I always secretly wonder what’s keeping them? Surely I can’t be alone and forgotten under this sky of sunbleached terracotta, where only sorrow sprouts from the cold, quiet earth. The fires around here calmed a few months ago. Not sure where it’s burning so hot to threaten our lot. I think maybe “where” is having an identity crisis at the moment, because what was there before won’t be after, and is anywhere still the same where if everything is different? It’s a kind of ship of Theseus, but places just feel different from ships. Ships travel between places. Ships bombard places. Ships, themselves though, they don’t usually become places unto themselves. There’s something transient about the bearer.

Schlepping my pack around reminds me I am the transient bearer. Floating on the currents from place to place. When was the last time I felt at home? I’m not even sure I know what the feeling is. Perhaps cuddling under a blanket with a loved one? Gotta take that where you can get it these days. It’s a whole new world. Loved ones are a million miles away, started with social distancing and slid right into social signaling. Sides were drawn, as they always are, over the stupid ideas of tiny men who loathed being so small.

I’m praying for rain these days. It’s gotten harder, angrier. It pelts you on its way down and brings you to your knees. But it clears the smoke from the sky, it keeps others inside, keeps others away. They can’t hurt me if they’re hiding from the deluge. The rains signal the end of summer, and encourage the apricot-colored fruits of the forest floor to emerge from their duff oubliettes. One of the last of nature’s bounties. After remains nothing but bark and leaves and the snow berries that mock us all winter long. Even the birds know they’re toxic. For now there are still some blackberries. Invasive, if that still matters in this world, but plump and delicious nonetheless. At least for a little bit. They’ve already begun to wither under the late summer sun, praying for an end to the drought that saps their rootstores.

Sometimes I wonder if my rootstores are draining, or drained entirely. With nothing rooting me, where could I store anything anyway? Transients never push down into the soil and hold on. They float on the wind or the waves, hoping someone waves them in. An opportunity for parlay and perhaps peace. Just need to put up a flag, send out a message that pleads, a symbol that pleases.

I’m doubtful anyone will read this. My messages fell on primarily deaf ears even when people were capable of listening. Nowadays they hear nothing but their fear whispering, like King Claudius in their ear, sweet succor, are the most poisonous of fruits as sweet as the least? Sweeter still? My own fruits are bitter, and I’d like no more than to have the kindness in my heart not to fault any for avoiding my offerings, but that’s not how a heart handles rejection.

Curried on light waves
Lonely words looking like
“Is anybody out there?”
Endure echoing spite