Enga mellom fjella

Nakama is...

...a friend that's family.

Me.

Today is a friend's birthday. I already wished him a happy 41st earlier this week.

I am still working on the chapbook "This and every November". This is my poem for him:

"This and every November [#4 Gary Mc]" 

This and every November

         for Gary

Thoughts flew off to somewhere in September. Lost themselves in the ebbing warmth of spent embers. I could not travel to find them. Rooted in the memories of other autumns I awaited leaf-change and the turn of directions cold winds would bring. I missed them until I forgot that once they were mine. I felt naked like a tree without leaves. And like a dead snag holding fast to the earth I was reluctant to bid them farewell. I faded before the flow of forever.

Yet thoughts fled none-the-less like the days we worked side by side so aware of the distance, the necessary chasm that kept us sane and apart. My part in that forest-fire I try to forgive, no blame placed on you. Still the same, October followed and brought pumpkins and apples and frost, yet no harvest from fields never planted. Granted they had stayed snow-covered till June, mud-slick in July, gasping for breath come hot August. Now the winds come from the east, backed up by a northern bone chill; branch and twig and the verdant cockscombs of summer look more like old rotting snags.

I could leave, but where would my thoughts find a home without me to return to? Yes, those, the ones that sneak back and perch in my thinning hair, this and every November.

Of course, it's not the only poem I've written for him... there are many.

I thought how nice it would be to make a facebook album of some of my favorite photos, call it "Because you could not be there with me", send him a copy. 41 photos would do.

And I would do it today if I weren't so busy.

Have doctor's appointment this afternoon and tonight, tomorrow and Saturday is the Montana Festival of the Book.

I'll get around to it.

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