Bear Memorial --- Round Two

Whether these trips are out of my life or back into it, I haven't decided. Whichever is the case, they are a big jump, and I have to work hard to make the leap from my life "out there" in Arizona and New Mexico and the one "back here," the small town in Wisconsin where I came of age. The smells of mowed grass, the feel of summer air, the thick and sultry greenness all kick-start emotions and memories I have yet to make peace with. My gut is twisted into skeins of anxiety by the calm that pervades this place. Though, they are gone, my mother and father accompany me on my walks, my ruminations, my dreams. For whatever reason, I am drawn back to them, pulled up close in the hopes that I might better see the still pulsing complexity of them and the marks they left on me. I am submerged in this place, deprived of air, and have to learn to breathe under the water of memory. Take a breath, brother, take a breath. You can learn to see what before was too hard to digest, to forgive, to put to rest.