the secret place

So exhausted. In this particular professional dance of monkey chasing weasel, I'm not the cobbler's bench. I'm the monkey AND the weasel. And maybe the cobbler too. We're all very tired.

I'm envisioning a creek in the Allegheny Mountains of New York, winding through an obscure valley fifty miles from humanity. As the slopes of the mountains rise the deciduous trees predominate, but here it's all pine without undergrowth; ember-shaded needles swathe the ground beneath the trees, sharpening the emptiness and muffling all sound but the running of the creek and the rough cry, here and there, of the crows. It's an overcast early autumn afternoon, barely breezy, not too hot, and the clear-dark water reflects the deep fox colors of the boles, the secretive green of the branches, all shadow, with the quickened dart and drift of minnow wavering underneath.

I have come along the thin deer trail to the handbuilt wooden bridge lying low over the water. I'm sitting with my feet in the swift and frigid current, trying to catch the skips and rills from the half-risen rocks, resting my forehead on the stripped-bark rails of the bridge and feeling the slow cooling of my skin. I can finally think of nothing, here in the simple dusk of the pine-tree afternoon, surrounded by noises that have nothing to do with me, and in the empty solitude all I know is God.