Please, when I say I live off property, out of this world, do not believe I’m a flake or some unsufferable fool; I don’t pretend to be beyond, above, or on another plane.
I’m plenty here on site, plenty human and fallible, sucked down by gravity and aging, linear and all-consuming. It’s just I hold this kite but can’t see it fully from where I stand, and she flies high, sure of my grasp; she sighs in the clear wind, fresh, knowing; and she sways and pulls, and claps her corners. Don’t take it the wrong way, please, that I never let go of her and sometimes imagine her colors, while she shapeshifts with the seasons, always different, way up, where noise subsides to the wind’s command; thunderbolts and rumbling skies, she twists and jerks in my hold, but as I am made for this earth, we must stay in place while you and I have tea or send written messages to each other, in the time we are given, being friends.
You must know I dismounted the high-horse a while ago, as I realized I wasn’t the high-bred rider of my dense imagination; had to walk the trails and wonder if someday a manor might take me in at last. No, the hounds of my memories, the hunters and the game, quail and duck, our short jackets and breeches, wild patches of grass, all is past; no purebreds remain.
So let me dwell in my strange melancholy even if it seems cold to you; it’s just the coming autumn introduced in late spring, before the last of the hunt, swarming with happy hounds, all ears flapping. Take my nostalgia that won’t subside this time, not yet. Not until the rustling, the howling, and snorting are erased; when the cool wind gets even more unfamiliar; when the sweaters and the tweed jackets and the argyle socks are but the soft remnant of a song, lost to the old country.
