The Fox at Dawn

There are little pieces of paper in piles on the tables. In a flash I have written ‘I’m afraid my daughter will never fully recover’ before I hear the first prompt: name things you were afraid of as a child. Other prompts follow- fears around identity, the body, family, children, the outdoors, society, the world, aging.  On and on I reach for the tiny slips of paper- 

-making a mistake, my mother dying, running into my father in airports,  diving, rollercoasters, brain aneurysms, having to work at real jobs until I die, fascism, the death of democracy, my six decades of journals ending up in a trash heap unread, my daughter never being able to make it on her own, asking for help, going to war with our former allies, becoming a dictatorship, seeing him again, not seeing him again, ending up in the Bee Gees/Donna Summers/Lynyrd Skynyrd/Journey nursing home instead of The Clash/Joni Mitchell/Talking Heads/Kate Bush nursing home, my daughter being picked up by ICE, never being loved again, my house falling apart, the increasing decline of my mother, the killing of our planet, never having enough money no matter how many jobs I have, my country committing genocide- 

on and on I list and the weight is excruciating. I see myself bursting with fear, I am choking on it as I try to mash it down down down. No wonder I once found relief for a minute in alcohol. No wonder everything inside me just hurts and I am paralyzed and procrastinating, unable to deal with simple things like making an appointment to get my taxes done or go to the doctor. No wonder I am so very heavy, staggering under the load I carry, the load I don’t know how to set down. And I see everyone else around this table, around our country, staggering under the load too.  The world’s epitaph reads Death by Deferred Maintenance.

So there they all are, all these little pieces of big fears.
How can I transform them? 
That is the crux of everything, isn’t it.
The fears exist
I can live with them 
only through transformation. 

I will paste them onto a kite and fly them
high high high in the sky-
I see it climb and climb
the spool unreeling too quickly
the end of the string untied
Whoosh! Off it sails
like the kite I flew alone on the lakefront
almost fifty years ago
Whoosh! Torn from my hands
in only seconds of flight
sailing high up and over
all eight lanes of Lakeshore Drive.

Untethered a kite cannot fly for long,
it takes one thin string
holding it to earth
for it to soar.
Set free, it only careens
without direction
until it loses heart
and crashes to the ground-
Must I keep hold of the string?

Somehow it made it better, seeing it in the sky
instead of crumpled on a sidewalk
on the other side of traffic I cannot cross.

The topic is happiness. Can you write about it?

Can you name what brings you comfort? What kindles joy? What makes you feel playful? What do you look forward to? When do you feel most connected to the divine? When do you feel validation? What do you want to remember on your death bed? Let us remember these things. The hand reaches gladly for the tiny slips of paper-

-feeding the birds, hearing an owl at dusk, getting a glimpse of a fox, building a fire, someone telling me out of the blue that something I wrote stayed with them, seeing happiness and pride on the faces of children at curtain call, random hugs in the hallways, building a fire, my bed, writing before dawn in the Little Wood, the vision of Mitch McConnell in Bruegel’s Hell being sodomized by a fish, wonder tales, the company of the young, planting things, polar expeditions, finishing a good book, finishing a mediocre book, kittens and puppies, knowing Hindman is there whether I am or not, snow days, making discoveries, making art, soaking in a tub by candlelight, floating on a lake looking up at the sky, finding a book I didn’t know I needed, holding my daughter in my arms for the very first time, knowing that in spite of everything, I am capable of undying love-

They are spilling out even more quickly than fear, these glimmers, these tiny wings of wonder and hope and joy.

I will make them into the tail of my kite.

Lift drag gravity tension.
For the kite to soar
all these things must work together.

Kite and tail
fly together
held to the earth
by slender string
climbing and dancing
on currents unseen.

I just have to hold on.
We just have to hold on.

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