What’s past help is past grief

Somnolent nights, listening to Arthur Russell’s corn fields grow in the aftermath of the seething July heat, some weeks behind the aftermath of the first cutting of the hay that is baled in what might pass for mobile ovals. Abundant summer, no longer endless, and it’s not as if she’s the first to utter nothing ever happens here or the first to feel, without yet gaining conceptual purchase over, a kind of fated projection outward from this moment. Being repelled from this nothing, as far away as can presently be conceived, is where and how she will find herself. And in that years-long arc from this place, as the sense of self formed from it and wanting to be done with it hardens like a shell, she will venture recognition of a softening loss growing out from the inside. what seemed at the time a necessary casting off will come back and grow roots. It has not rotted through, this soft centered core, it is an anvil that still sings when struck. The chores will come too soon tomorrow whether she goes in now or stays out and counts stars for another hour. Justification not needed.