an essay

“I’ve just freshened the flower on my car.” she said.
My wife’s green Honda with the large yellow flower tied tightly to the radio antenna playing country music for her journey as she seeks patients on which to lay her hand with words and ears to unravel the mystery of a mind sick in life and struggling through the journey of just where to start where nothing was before.
Crazy!
I think not
a tumble weed and dandelion seed,
now that is crazy to think of one and go to another
a rainbow of weeds colored by life’s failures and healed through life’s passing.
What are we?
wood peckers tap, tap, tapping mysterious tunes to cheer our souls
on cold dark nights that visit us at noon
The sun is up, oh yes it is
but not in my mind. The light is off the door is closed
the stairs lead down or is that up.
“Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!”
The child screams
“do not leave me here.”
“Why do we do that?”
“I don’t know.”
“It was done to me.”
“I did it to mine.”
Mothers, Fathers, frustrated, intolerant, angry,
I cannot keep up, they race ahead, too far, too fast and then they stop.
Drink brought my Father down.
My Mother died with her mother. Years before.
Garbage.
I am left with a white plastic bag tied tightly of left over thoughts not mine but theirs but taken by me as my own.
Corn flower blue skies sit over me now.
The far off dark clouds of Wellington have blown clear by my dogged discomfort not accepting the pumpkin sized boil on my brain callused seasoned hands clap to scare the stars that shone bright I could not see waves crashed on rocks I called my head and sat like crows to caw caw caw at my dead black tree stump brain.
But now the light it glares at me dark glasses replaced by clear a hat upon my head the beach is but a mile down the road or is that up crackling leaves of grass twist and shout my name the field where I sit in the barn with the bales of hay cowering mice run and hide.
I get out,
open the doors, the tractor tows me.
On a sled, sheep dogs and bicycles and pails of milk, Miss McDonald’s farm.
Childhood children dad son brother cousin uncle no grandchildren yet life tumbles the door opened and revealed to me is so much more that this loaded pen of ink can handle.