Give It A Chance - Joan Brady

I didn’t want to leave where I was, but the stars vanished, one by one by one, and the moon narrowed to a fine crescent...and I couldn’t find the long-embraced echoes that held me in memories’ half-light, but then the wild fire started burning hotter and hotter till the light became unwavering, the heat intense, and the smoke filled my nostrils, choking me, into barely tolerable half-breaths, and so I ran, first in the van, then on foot on the road, still with back-pack & elderly cat...until the road vanished, and there was a clearing of air, and trees for shade, and fields of poppies, orange in a new warmth, measured in even days where sleep was possible, and fresh mint and berries grew by streams flowing an abundance of cool water where sometimes tadpole-ponds could be found...always fresh...not stagnant...like before.

And still I see a turtle now and then, and one day the cat wandered off into a choice of wildness from where she once came to me, long ago, as a stray kitten. Always, I knew, there was that part of her, and now we were creatures of the same wandering, but still, I do see her at distances watching me, and I hope she is wishing me well.

I didn’t plan for this. It is an invention of happenstance...and so often, I long to hear old music coloring time before the other part consumed what had gone before in it’s immediacy of dark, flickering, choking heat, impossible...even though I tried to adjust...too long I think...but I did get out...safe in this place of even greenness, populated by strangers, sometimes seen as shadows, sometimes solid, each wandering in their own direction, some breaking eye contact, some nodding as we pass...a few are now recognizable where berries and mint are plentiful for all, four-footed, two-footed...and I wonder about them...but never stop. 

No, I never stop! I did that once...and it was so beautiful...until the vanishing began...some parts marked...some parts continual motion...and so it was I became another being in another place, forever changing in what measures as countable time...sun up, sun down, rain, predictable, when seasons change...but still, sometimes, I do see my old cat, far in the distance, and am comforted that she, of the time before, is still out there.

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