Lucas Daniel Peters

The students were in tandem at the art school today. Recreating all of the pieces rejected from the school’s gallery. All with the same name. Untitled (flowers). As in mimicry. Their well-intended lesson on perspective. Meaning no flowers go tossed. No flowers stowed in some old windowless air-controlled room. No single student tragically stuck painting all the flowers alone. Not their half-hearted lines & wrongly assumed arrangements. No stem embarrassed by their artist’s lazy smudge. No sad blur for that wandering bee. No thin squirrel hogging the mossy birdbath. Or silhouette of a still man watching from his tall kitchen window alone. No—they’re each painting a new world so individual & far from what I can imagine that it overwhelms. So much so that once I got home from work, I napped a summer’s worth of naps in tandem with the late afternoon by accident! Summer had yet to begin, & still I welcomed him then—the sun setting through the city’s paltry fog & pollen haze of spring’s bloom. Quietly he shared the room with me. & when my hand slipped down to where he rested on my belly, I patted his head till my fingers warmed. Till he mumbled a discomfort I immediately forgot. & we both dozed back to what felt like an infinite sleep of hot afternoons. Both stripped down & exhausted on the floor after work. Grateful for those microdreams where I could wonder what color hydrangea was his favorite just as he could mine. Green. Green for its abundance. For that privilege of staying both hidden & seen. Of being the belly where the others may lay their head. Which is its own sort of perfection. To no longer worry how long or if at all.

Falling happens. A lot as you get older. You spend your time picking yourself up. Off gravel lanes. Among roots & rocks. Alongside river & shore. But the river itself is generally safe. If you fall, you fall into water. Into the hatchings of sulphur mayflies. Onto riverbed debris spring floods exposed. Glass & littered tires. Soft hackles. Their translucent hair. Smooth stones. Feet slip. Boots flood. Palms abrade. Hair wets. Sky blue. Endorphins realign the body in relation to the world. Because water is the harbinger of. Welcomer. The place where we are born again. & I was born again. My brothers were born again. Among people content in their hearts. To a place where we so suddenly belonged. To a home to play at times. To eat at times. To sow at times. With family who tell us come out from under there when we hide. Ask if they can sit at the end of our bike when we want ride into town to be alone. Because of course we’ll oblige. Because the heart doesn’t yearn to be left. Because the heart is cumulative. Because even the sleepless hear replies to their quiet words. Because when the night listens, it ultimately whispers back. Because somewhere in country town, small boys are collecting the last remnants of snow on a sled. Because the local racquet club doesn’t care if you take pictures when they play. Because on the northside of Syracuse, boarded-up windows of an old schoolhouse read Do See You What I See? like some incomprehensible joke. Because maybe it all goes without saying. That there’s no explanation. No next thing. That in its place, are seasons filled with strolling trees. Slow traveling animal-shaped clouds. Birds who rarely whisper your secrets to others. Soft landings. & that embarrassed laughter of tumbling into the ditch when the bike chain comes loose.

Even without saying I’m ready, I wake up every spring. To sputtering grackles & cardinals in song. To robin song. To the correction that’s the Mourning Dove’s song. & suddenly feel happy. Because that means school is almost over. & soon it will be summer. Because I remember what I looked forward to most back then. & it was hiding from farm work in the woods. With cattle & sheep. Listening to my handheld radio. But today as I put on NPR I pay off the last of my student loan. Hear of the unfolding pandemic. A report that with no human contact, the animals in Yellowstone were having a party. That the largest-ever ozone hole in the North Pole closed. An interview with a New York woman who said she had no retirement. No insurance. That she’d leap off the Brooklyn Bridge if it weren’t illegal . . . Even without saying I’m ready, today I wash pillows & sheets. Curtains for both windows & shower. Looked outside. Thought how rain & sun at the same time is often called a fox wedding or a devil kissing his wife & that this morning’s sun & snow has me guessing. Peeled stickers from glass jars I wished to keep. Soaked in part water, part vinegar, part soap. Dechlorinated water to grow trimmed philodendron in. Which is to simply say I left its clear jar uncovered overnight. Wiped down the fridge. Swept the stairs. Burnt broccoli. Burnt lamb. Took a long walk. Felt the afternoon’s cold breeze though the sun seemed warm. Had sourdough. Ricotta with honey. Thought of the dying. Thought of how silly writing this is. But still briefly enjoyed the privacy of the afternoon sun spilling in my living room for the first time in a long time & for the first time this year. In the yard, deer all day. Inside, a recently discovered Polaroid of me with our dog Winter on the fridge. We grew up together & she died from pneumonia when I was fifteen. Called my dad. Asked if he was safe. How he was. If he remembered whatever happened to her collar & bowl. Our old home with the long gravel laneway. The pale couch she’d lick our feet on. If he ever thought of all the stray cats grandma took in. Or how often the sheep got loose. Everyday. What awakening. To never tire of woolgathering & field mending. Of our daily chore. Of roads lined with heaving cottonwoods. & spotting men who nod to you on the street below, smoking from their second-floor bathroom window. Of sidewalk chalk & yard waste still weeks away from city cleanup. Of being both made to want more & hurt more. From the places we aren’t yet leaving. Where the sweetgrass mountains meet the prairie. & the cattle keep their horns.