on a startlingly familiar timeline / unplanned but predicted / delayed and inevitable / unsurprising until its unbidden early arrival: another departure approaches. reluctance abounds and I want to say it’s the hero’s journey but to save myself now feels out of step: a better plan had been. precise, promising, beautiful. amidst the seep and stretch of an alone that isn’t lonely so much as marooned. a culture strange (/estranged?), not new. purpose shared and celebrated. the earth welcoming and kind. a pair of mini donkeys, pen full of piglets, playgrounds for goats, Great Pyrenees at work, freshly shorn scrawny lambs. the deer who routinely now fold us into their herd, unannounced, calmly curious. daily healing of high school hearts. inadvertent monk-hood, unsolicited calm. years of contemplation, years of alone. years of growing a best friendship worth its name suffering brutally beautifully now. and how. another departure approaches: an unbidden early arrival / inevitable and immediate / predicted but unplanned / on a startlingly familiar timeline.

Mercury is back in retrograde and it probably doesn’t matter but maybe it does? so the advice is to lead with humanity

thumps and swishes. dry grasses, hooves against dirt. tufts of white, fluffs at height. each a sussuruss springing up round zig bounce, thump thumping against the ground. several bright rumps now at this, otherwise perfectly blended brisk blurry browns through tall frail brush. sweet evening thu-thump swish hush.

I would like to know the overlap of folks who found new life/strength/confidence via Bad Bunny as well as Heated Rivalry, and then I want us to become pen pals

in a matted tangle of winter-dried grasses I spotted the reddest red. so red I thought “let me get that trash”, but reached toward the opposite. a tiny hearty ladybug crept up my thumb to remind me that spring always comes

loving to hurt I painted myself sad. a tragedy uncovered only when I celebrated as my heart broke as I danced when I wept as I laughed as I sang when I grieved and laughed again

no matter how much time I spend under moonlight, my body still reaches toward it from the nighttime shade for warmth

did I tell you about the mole who fought back? proud Deets attacked and carried it a while, mouthing gently her new toy with the guilelessly proud sadism of the natural predator. the mole, now situated on the ground far from where Deets grabbed it, turned to face her. Deets leaned toward the rotund mammal who it turns out was preparing itself, steeling for the moment when it could lunge directly at the face of its attacker. neither Deets nor I had ever seen this level of fearless moxie from something that had been in her mouth. Deets did a startled little hop, stepped back, and took a lap around the silken creature. this little soft pudgy blind rodent never let its back face Deets as she moved. it waited, vigilantly and repeatedly, for Deets to close in before launching itself onto and up off its meager haunches toward my cat’s curious face. I stood idly awestruck, witnessing dumbfounded as the mole strategically confused Deets and backed itself into a tangle of sage underbrush, all the while baring teeth. Deets gave up more easily than I’d have expected. mole ftw.