I’ve never been married…

Technically.

I’m 64 going on infinity.

I used to be a romantic until life and poor choices obliterated that notion. I wasn’t looking for this. It’s like that saying, “Life is what happens when you are making other plans.”

She is younger than I am and so easy to be around. It’s not about love in that puppy dog, I can’t live without you or breathe when you’re around sort of thing. It’s more like I really love being with her.

If I marry it will only be once.

The summers heat has landed on our shores a beaten path.

The anger here is felt by some,the others feel their wrath.

They never knew the hardships, just mythology from a book.

Technology begat luxury and in this foundations shook.

The old men knew their errors and knew none were turning back.

Me, I left for cooler shores with my luggage on a rack.

The satellites are humming, but no one hears that sound.

Looking skyward hearing drumming. Few ears are to the ground.

I recognized my nature.

Not much was steeped in good.

There was this strange sensation.

Like maybe I just should.

Forget it all and start a new.

Take the narrow view to wide.

Take my head out from my ass.

And maybe look outside.

Not all is gain or glory.

Not all is pain and strife.

The road the path the choices made.

It’s a wild ride this life.

The north coast of Nova Scotia is somewhere between the middle of nowhere and God’s country.

Somehow, I was still there when I was 18, and she’d been dead for 7 years. I would still look for her whenever I was in a crowd of people. Straining searching. Imagining that she had faked her death to get away from me. My mother. By the fall of 1977, I guess I figured she was really dead. All of this I kept to myself. Winding wrapped tight. In my tiny bedroom on a twin bed in a mobile trailer on an acre of land at the edge of Deception River is where the nightmare began…

I ripped out the window screen at the foot of the bed one night and the screen at the head of the bed the next. Screaming some nonsensical rage about “I’ll get you! You motherfuckers!” The next morning the fingernails were torn and bloodied from ripping out screens. Both windows smashed.

I could hear the breathing coming from something somewhere. I held my breath and lay still on my bed, making sure it wasn’t me. I looked under the bed and under the trailer. Nothing. I was alone… except for whatever was breathing. It felt like it was coming from inside me. I had never been so terrified. I forgot to pray. I forgot God.

After a few days and nights of this, I realized that I had to leave that bed, that bedroom,that trailer, that acre, that river.

I left and never returned…

Biscuits, coffee, silence…

down at the watering hole.

My barista left, not coming back.

She is climbing in that hole.

Of past and passed acquaintance.

The one that holds you all.

With the Iconoclastic Demons.

Smiling sweet and standing tall.

I’ve grown tired and silent amidst all this language of defining with, what a woman is and ciswoman and keeping up with the genders. Do we really have this much time on our hands? I am weary of bitcoin and investments making money while you sleep because of the luxury this creates, and in all this talk about money, I’ve grown silent… I hear rumors and rumors of war, and in the silence, I think, ah…

I’m in a transitional phase; not the last transition I’ll go through. However, that is getting closer, too.

I moved here to the city of my birth, I told myself, to find my father. However, upon reflection, I really came to find her…

My daughter is 11 going on much more, and we are, just the 2 of us, planning on going back to where I originally came from, all those years ago looking for Dad and I’m that now.

My parents came from the east, which reminds me of the old joke: “What do you call a Newfoundlander who runs out of money on the way to Toronto? A Cape Bretoner!”

I’ve learned much about parenting from being a parent. She has taught me by being honest, and I have learned from her by being teachable.

The lessons continue…

I’ve been listening to the masses.

They be trying to bring me down.

I’ve been taking master classes.

Ever since the blues dropped into town.

They are talking about oppression.

Like, it’s shiny and brand new.

So much horror in that lesson.

That ironic cake to chew.

They are raging, eyes are blurry.

Tears they fall like April rain.

Going nowhere in such a hurry.

Like they just discovered pain.

I’ve been looking for a chorus. That won’t break us into songs. Maybe something just to bore us. Take our rights back from the wrongs…

I remembered everything dramatic until I didn’t. I let that shit go, which is a monumental gift.

However, I  remember certain individuals from my childhood who, at the time, I thought were unreasonably cruel. Now I realize they were just human. Nothing more or less. So, to those people that I criticized on the eastcoast!,

“All Apologies!”