There’s no one around the edges of town on Friday evening, save for a stranger in a brand-new leather jacket. He walks ahead of me.
Two weeks past the July flood, there’s stand-out heroes, and a lot of folks who stepped up in ways that are amazing, admirable, kind of jaw-dropping, honestly. But the flood unearthed all that pandemic misery, and so much more that we’d stuffed down, too. Similar — and yet, different, too. Piece by piece, my state is cleaning, hammering lives back together.
A young fox hurries along the jagged riverbank where lawn now meets abyss. The creature pauses, listens. I’m no threat, me with my hands sunk in my pockets, leaning back on my heels. The fox trots along.
The evening threatens more thunderstorms. I keep thinking of childbirth labor, how those waves of contractions bore me along mightily. Childbirth was the first time I’d understood so inherently that I’m as much a part of the universe as famed Helen of Troy, as that stranger walking ahead of me and disappearing around a broken-down scrapheap of a motel, as you reader, and my dear cats pawing a dropped ball of red yarn. Rain and more rain. Rising rivers. Even as the rain began pelting, I stood there, awestruck.
Stony Soil Vermont 
….I’d understood so inherently that I’m as much a part of the universe….”
Yes, we are a part, but when you consider the scope and factor in the time as well, our lives are the tiniest imaginable sliver of the total. Three score and ten vs. 13 billion years and all on a tiny planet in the backwaters of a small galaxy of which there are 100 billion that we can see. 100 Billion GALAXIES…each with billions of stars.
It is aweinspiing…I just learned yesterday of Homo Naledi, an extinct species of proto-human that was burying it’s dead 150 thousand years (or more) before we thought humans achieved something like consciousness. Who are we, why are we here, where are we going? All a big coincidence? Yes, I’m afraid it’s true. As much as we want to believe otherwise, we are here for a brief season and we’ll be gone too.
Sorry this is so bad for you all.
This moved me very much. I think we’re all just still trying to make sense of it all and you put it into words so beautifully.
So many things unfurling…. 💚
The phrase “Wreckage, Human & Otherwise” made me think about a poem I wrote in my teens in sympathy with someone contemplating suicide…
Infinity
by Michael R. Burch
Have you tasted the bitterness of tears of despair?
Have you watched the sun sink through such pale, balmless air
that your soul sought its shell like a crab on a beach,
then scuttled inside to be safe, out of reach?
Might I lift you tonight from earth’s wreckage and damage
on these waves gently rising to pay the moon homage?
Or better, perhaps, let me say that I, too,
have dreamed of infinity . . . windswept and blue.
Thank you for posting this!
As the survivor of a flood who lived on an island for a week, with no electricity in the middle of a heat wave, and no fresh water, and who almost lost his wife while having to comfort our young son, I can sympathize with anyone in similar straits. There can be a lot of “wreckage and damage” in this life, unfortunately, and sometimes we have to make the best of the hand we’re dealt.
My goodness! My heart goes out to you!!!
We had another violent thunder storm and downpour last night. Just when I thought things would dry out.
My sympathies!!!
Since I’m not there to help, I’m sending hugs your way.
I am so grateful I didn’t get flooded. So many around me have not been so lucky… 💚
Also interesting that the deluge raises the ‘stuffed down’ stuff of the pandemic. Plenty of that.
Incredibly fascinating. Really!
On our recent Vermont visit, I also found many strangers willing to help. There’s no misery when you are are surrounded by such verdant natural beauty as well there.
Vermonters are terrific at helping others, that’s for sure.
Maybe the cooler weather helps in this regard to keep tempers down.
Very well might. Great theory.
I can think of the opposite effect in hot South Florida.