The Dog Stars

Waiting for your real life to begin. Maybe the most real thing the end. To realize that when it’s too late.

We’ll keep track of this little rill. Of tying on fresh tippet and the tufty fly, and we’ll blow on it for luck. Of this cast and the next and if we ourselves are lucky it will add up to nightfall.

He kind of hunched over himself maybe remembering. Suddenly remote like his spirit retreated to a safer distance. To watch.

but a memory you can only haul into the sun and hope it desiccates. Dries to something crumbled and odorless.

The sun overwhelming eyelids, pouring down like heavy water. If there is nothing else there is this: to be inundated, consumed.

To multiply the years and divide by the desire to live is a kind of false accounting.

Never liked whiskey, he told me. But I drink it because it has a storied history.

That is what we are, what we do: nose a net, push push, a net that never exists. The knots in the mesh as strong as our own believing. Our own fears.

We listen to wind high, water low.