Man Among the Living

The moon shines happy in my bedroom window, growing bigger. It rained earlier and a little bit the last few days, so the air is mulchy and cool. A whole new July world has presented itself, sweatshirts without sunglasses and puddles in the dirt. I'm listening to a friend's sister's CD (actually in my iPhone so my statement is anachronistic)...not sure whether to go to bed or crawl out into the wet sage and talk to the rabbits. I'm busy, as they say, but it's so sweet and cool and my eyes don't hurt anymore. The smoke has been composted into the clay and maybe it'll bring new vegetables. A tough start to a summer, the toughest I've ever been part of...but a few days of afternoon clouds and the smell of raisin rain and it's all erased. This is the most hospitable place on earth, after the volcanoes spewed and the land upheaved...if you lived through that you're in the right place. My house is cool and I'll be able to sleep with a smiley face...I felt the smile at 4:43am last night when I rolled over to drink water and caught a draft from the dormer window. I reveled with the stink bugs, lizards and spiders strutting through my room with no issues. We all smiled into the big windows showing the blinking stars and listening to the quiet coyotes waiting until tomorrow for forage. I hear crying babies and slow cars with cigarette red lights spinning crazed into the Mesa for hot springs and campsites and people waiting for days. And I know to tell the soft nothingness here that I'm still around to witness and feel this in my gnarled feet. There's nothing else I'd rather be doing and nowhere else I'd rather be. Sad, yes, but with the taste of the Rio Grande in my teeth, and the sense that the thunderstorms love us and will give us what we need, man among the living.