If I had made the skies

If I had made the stars, laid out the moons, the planets, the suns, the galaxies, carved a niche from nothingness, I would have done it differently. If the firmaments were in my care, in the beginning, they would be brighter. How senseless it is, to have such glories obscured by the lights of a city. Certainly, were I given such a prestigious position, I’d have seen them coming. Although, to speak about time to IT that exists outside of time is to necessarily create confusion. How would time unfold to such a being?

For some reason, I keep conceiving of history from that distance as appearing on a kaleidoscope. A magical tube where the Creator can rest his, debatably, benevolent gaze and watch Brontosaurus lopping off whole tops of trees while above, spins  a Neanderthal, carving a picture of a man with a bison’s head into stone, and underneath that, spinning brightly, is our future whatever that might entail.

And when the Supreme Being sits back from the kaleidoscope, takes stock of the gin, and ponders what it means to live outside of time, if indeed, one who exists outside of time can be said to exist at all, I’d take a paint brush from It’s right pocket and make the red stars brighter, I’d change the orbits of planets and brighten stars that have been around for thousands of years. I’d change the orbits of things, send them smashing into one another, then collecting their bits and pieces and constructing a mosaic to hang on the dark side of the moon.

If I had been given license to lay out the stars, you would have known that I was here. You would not ever have had to walk out on a winter night, trees sheathed in ice, to ask the heavens why and wherefore, and if I existed. You’d know by how bright I mad the stars, how low I hung the moon.

                                                Such, Such will be the days

                Thinking ahead on being fifty-five, it’s strange to muse on the sorts of things that I’m doing. In the early evenings, I’ve noticed that I spend a lot of time in the garden. I kneel frequently, and prune half-heartedly at the branches of a blueberry bush and the knobby limbs of an orange tree, dusted by cobwebs. What I do, now that I’m fifty-five, is sit outside in the early evening gathering in the warmth and the light as if I’m photosynthesizing.

                It’s hard to remember sometimes, what I will be like when I’m fifty five. The memories are hazy, indistinct. It’s hard to recall the future, since it hasn’t happened yet. I appear to have moved somewhere warmer if the citrus is any sort of sign. A number of people that I know now have passed from this life into the next, or into the dirt, if you’re so inclined.

                That summer, I will turn fifty-five, there will be a party thrown in my honor. Many of the people will drink beer, and I’ll grill, though it looks like I still don’t like beer when I’m fifty-five and am drinking wine from a small plastic cup. It seems cavalier, or so I’ve been told, to write a memoir at such a young age, but what if I did this instead? What if I wrote a memoir of a fifty-five year old who didn’t yet exist, but had existed, following the garden of forking paths in a way that I could comprehend. Would that qualify as less hubristic?

When I am fifty-five I see that the dirt beneath my fingernails does not bother me as much. It appears that I am still shedding the cold that I’ve been wearing out here for years. In the dimming of the light, a nut hatch sings and a woodpecker hammers away in the distance. What a strange memory, this picture of the future makes.