In the distance, the unmistakable crack of a slice or a hook. Children search through the tall grass along the fenceline for a lost golf ball, a great treasure. Two young helmeted boys hover futuristically on segways down the path, making me irrationally angry and sad. Just use your fucking legs, I think. Two more helmeted boys ride by on bicycles, thigh and calf muscles expanding and contracting to get their bodies and their bicycles up the gently-sloping incline, and balance is restored.
Last night I dreamt that I was popping blackheads on my nose but what emerged was not pus but the black antenna of a gypsy moth caterpillar. Wildfires and the coronavirus and police brutality and racism and ignorance and lies and manipulation and propaganda and judgment and fear and a gypsy moth infestation. Destruction and death. And death, and death.
I think of the coals of last night's fire glowing red in the dark, hint of hell. I woke up this morning with the smell of smoke in my hair.
The summer breeze in the towering twin trees in the park, glinting sun and whispering wind and quivering silver (quilvering?) leaves. The military drone of an airplane in the distance, the chirping and cheeping and twittering of birds. Cottony cumulus clouds break up the blue, hawks drift lazily overhead. I wave my arms at them: I'm still alive.
My body is weightless, suspended. I push myself, muscles expanding and contracting, through hydrogen and oxygen, which simultaneously resist and submit to my efforts. My thoughts drift like the hawks overhead.
