She bought groceries in the sunlight while the boys played in the old Olive Tree. They knew that tree, and the men who played Grateful Dead tunes nearby. Knew them not by name but by a sense of familiarity, and it was one earned. It was the same way they knew the magpies in the field, and the dove weed that rose in the Spring. The boys traced the lines of bark with their fingers and knew which branches would hold them firm, and which would bend. And he knew when the men deviated or flourished in their melodies that were theirs now as much as anybody’s. 

They’d eaten the pancakes and frittatas, and taken their lukewarm coffees to the playground the boys were outgrowing a hundred times, maybe more. That was where they sat on the bench and spoke to each other about how they were doing—“they” being the two of them. It was never thought to mention one or the other as an individual. It was business, and it was love. It was their life, and it wore the pragmatic robes of bills and meager problems and the promises they stuck to. 

But how many times had he looked over at her when she wasn’t paying attention, and marveled at her? How many times had he wondered about her as an individual? The boys would call to her from the shade of the old Olive Tree, and he would look out across the fields to where he knew the river hid, and he’d wonder about horizons. 

You know he’d read about them. Read about the mists so many times, and gone looking just as many. And he’d found it; he found them.

He wondered if his own father had ever come across them, and his father’s mother before that. He knew it would be her and not his grandfather, though he couldn’t say why. 

How long had they known the others?

And was it a curse? 

These were the same old circles. It did little to ask. 

And now he brought his sons here, his wife too. What was he playing at? Tempting them? 

They only come when you’re alone, he thought. They would not take them, not here—not like this. So the four of them laughed and played high above the world in the most secret place he’d ever known.

He didn’t tell them of the times the mists rolled in and the waves reared up to crash and battle, how he’d seen them walking. He’d come across them one at a time, and have conversations, and always they’d grin before they slipped away again. He knew they were ghosts. He knew that some were benevolent. He knew others were just sad. And there was the one who seemed hungry. He never forgot those eyes, and the way it smiled, the look it had. It was the look of a predator. 

 Same old circles. Better to trod on.

They seemed to him to be just another piece of a very intricate world. 

He found his gods early on. It was easy. 

There was sap on the branches, and different types of bark, and there was the light that danced off all the leaves and jointed turns of the branches. The light was music, a great symphony for the different trees and leaves and earth at his feet. He looked up into the sparkling lights and drank them in. 

He liked sweaters then too, and packed a canteen he wore with a strap. When he wasn’t climbing in those branches, a walking stick led him along, and he went about the world in this fashion, in his mind, before his legs were long enough to make it around the block.

And it was there too, he saw the mellow blues of the rainy day—saw how they made the waxy leaves shine, smelled how they freshened the air, felt on the back of his neck, and his cheeks and his soaking sweater how they chilled and drank in cold.

Thus he knew his gods. He was six years old. 

And he found, that no matter how many problems he thought he had, no matter how many years had passed, he could come back to them. He found that no matter how wretched he’d been, how pathetic, or seemingly grandiose, they were there, playing off the leaves as they always had. Whatever they felt, they kept on. He found too that he could always look up into the sparkling sunlight, or into the falling rain and drink them in. 

I feel something coming. And I’ve been trying to put words to it or put it to words. I feel this itch, and I feel tired of the character I’ve been playing, and then when I think that, I see myself smiling in so many conversations and telling stories and trying to be cool. And all at once I feel ready to quit being that me. And I see the rainy daylight, the blues all around, and I stand in the rain happy for its cold. I stare at the river and I hear the calls of ghosts from older times and I feel myself. 

Woe is me

I can put it away.

Who’s to say I can’t?

Just I, apparently—me. 

But is it me?

It’s only me when I come back to it.

I ran just now in a rainy field

I felt the blood go to my legs as I started to jog, 

—they threw me a ball.

Two players made as to tackle me

And a funny thing happened then,

I put it away.

And I felt only the thrill of movement

Of my lungs, my arms, 

my eyes to theirs, my eyes to grass, 

to the sky with all its light 

Felt the bit of power I still had in my legs

and the joy of acting without thought

And it wasn’t me anymore

I was free.

Until I came back to it when I jogged to edge of the field

And thought of all the things I had to do

Woe is me?

it is not me

I can put it away.