Rye after Dark

It’s been a dry winter,

plenty of sun,

feels so good in the moment,

crisp not cold, with a thin vapor of warmth

which sneaks through the season

before its turn.

This gets worrisome for those of us

who stay with the woods,

in this blessed totter-beam of balance

here at the interstices

of the urban rural divide,

because when there’s no snow pack

and the summer lightning

climbs then pays a visit

to somebody’s ridge,

well, you know you’ve a gambler inside,

nudging you how to live your life,

here where the rules

are older than fences.

The worry is the blessing, right—

didn’t cities rise

so people

wouldn’t have to live

with bears and other mountain things;

or struggle to learn

what the animals want

while protecting your own?

It’s a different sort of ease

here where you cut the wood

and kindling down to size,

where tending a fire

begins the year before.

Not ease so much as rightness.

Because though the work is constant,

it’s the healing sort,

that stitches up what split your heart

by turning you to nature.

Just today in fact

it was time to address the crawl-space door

which had dissembled into its constituent parts,

like an Ikea build in reverse.

The failed door in fact

was viewed by

a full Mayflower of colonialist rats

who saw it as a welcome sign,

and thought to drink our water,

chewing through the pipes for fun.

Not much fun,

but also it could be worse.

The day was sunny,

remember, dry winter,

so I brought the rip and cross saw

up to the pad by the house

and built a new door as well as I know how,

and how it comes out is always enough,

because you’re the only one it has to please,

and hope it dissuades a rat or two.

It’s not the first dry winter.

On the top of our place

where the greenhouses are,

and just past,

full on southern exposure,

you can read where the weather’s been

by the snagged Douglas Fir,

the south-aspect mortality

of my sun-killed firs.

It’s a lonesome sight,

surely my empathy for them

flows from the truth

that we live between spaces

and it could just as soon be me

I want to take the whole southern slope

just below the house

and bring it back to meadow

before the forest moved in,

then drop felled trees

beneath the earth

to slow the rain

in its hollow spongy space.

I want to do what the beavers did

before we ran them out of here,

because they looked so good as hats.

Because, you know, this winter’s dry.

It all calls for celebration, though,

the worries and the changes,

in the way Rembrandt handled Chiaroscuro,

working the in-between space

of darkness and light

until he let out

the inner life.

So this evening I poured myself a drink,

a shot of Kahlua on top some ice

that crackled at the contact.

But Kahlua’s too sweet on its own

to mark life’s package deal,

so I topped it with American Rye,

what my dad enjoyed,

and watched it lean dark and bitter-sweet,

with a just sharp edge

so you remember the world as it is,

rye after dark.