October

In my Summerland, it is always October. Night is always about to come on; here, a glittering crescent of moon hovers just over the hilltop and beside it, the evening star throws its light down, too. I walk across the plain below, always on the cusp of nightfall. If we get to have an afterlife at all, then this is where I want to spend mine, walking forever through this landscape, a solitary figure on the unpaved road that cuts through the illuminated darkness of near-night. Here, it is the end of a good day--what would constitute a good day in the afterlife?--perhaps I have spent the day walking out and also spent it composing essays, poems, because the passage of time will be of no more consequence to me, and so there has been time to do both, walk endlessly and write endlessly. Perhaps there has been some physical work as well, planting or more likely harvesting of the crops, for there are piles of grain and stacks of corn lining the roadway beside me. Even if there is no more need for nourishment in the Otherworld, still, there will be the need for the cycles I am familiar with from this world, else it would make no sense for October to exist, the waning of the year, the treasure box of things ending that I am so delighted to find myself confronted with opening.

So: it is the end of a good day and I am walking home through the early part of the autumn evening, with the moonlight and the starlight for company, the grain piles proof of the day's labor and I hope maybe a sheaf of writing in my pocket as tangible proof too. In this place, a poem is every bit as useful as food. Perhaps a dog runs out a little ahead of me as I find my way home. It is possible that during some part of my day here I've been in the company of others who might inhabit this place. I think that I am not completely alone here; but the truth is that solitude is the necessary condition for my pursuits, now as I imagine it will be then, and so at the end of every day, at the onset of each night, at these balanced moments of perfection , if I am alone then I know it is indeed a good afterlife I've landed in. I think alone, I write alone, I navigate the landscape alone, or alone save for the quiet company of the dog who pads along with me. In my Summerland, I know that at the far end of the road there is a stone house waiting, and inside it a wooden table. There will be hot soup to eat, and a window to look out of, and all throughout the night the moon will stay suspended, and the evening star along with it, and dreams will form themselves and stay with me as wake and cross back over the threshold and the cycle continues, the sun rising in the Otherworld, generously, if for no other reason than to give the day the opportunity to turn back into the night, and me the opportunity to walk back through it...