‘what’s the hassle kiddo, chopping meat is fun, come here and listen to the music of the chop, the sound of steel ripping through air, slicing through flesh and hitting wood, poetry I say’.

"There's a guy and he's standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon."

What if she doesn't take me seriously? My sweaty testimony wedged tight behind the tragic I used to think was honest? What if, right? What if . . . Isolation Real men feel that, right? They have …

Walk alone at night, quietly. Pause for eye contact with raccoons and night cats, your drunk self, and lights in the graveyard. Don't apologize for it in the morning. Instead of the shame you feel for one time acting selfishly and chasing a future, say…

Somewhere a banjo, somewhere a hound.

It is our gift-- the knowing/ without knowing--/ that allows us transport,

I do that now. And I shiver. My mom's eyes don't seem to have any expression. They look lifeless. Her eyes look... dead. Stop it, Alison, I tell myself. You're being stupid.

I thought the Ferris wheel was dumb. All it did was give you a high altitude view of the little Minnesota town where I had grown up.

Everything was cool until she used the phrase, "five million dollar home."

You want to be Teilhard de Chardin? You’re getting started way too late. There’s a better chance you’ll be tomorrow’s Peking Man if I bury you in the cellar.

Its odors of quicklime/ and pyre-smoke will curl/ commingled in acrid air.

This energy said, "Fuck it, I am going to be the fucking sun." In it’s language it sounded more like "Khershhhhhhh Hhhhhhhhhhh Zirshhhhhhh."

They coo and gurgle in the warmth of twig and down. They are so delicate, hard to look at without thinking of death. I tell them I want for them chief among all things strength, speed, resilience.

I wasn't there

I think she later thought about that. Just as she loved her son, I loved my mother. Just as my dad loved her, so the same kind of protective honoring love existed. Right or wrong, it was there, the elephant in the room.