The woods take me in, all knees and grubby elbows. They tolerate me. The deer bathe me in the river, those patient fuckers. They make me fall in love again, by which I mean: I feel soft and it terrifies.

i wake to the meadows all frosted where white-crowned sparrows sing and horses graze out at pastures golden-lit in front of snow-tipped mountains and the air smells like grass and cattle shit and the small ditch of water still runs through the cattail and the red tailed hawk circles like a red flame and it must be that the world is not in fact ending (at least not today)