The Drafts

Or What I Do for Fun (5-9 February 1989) after Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trees along the road are unprotected from weather and mystery. I ride my bicycle in the cold wind and get where I want without defenses. In the fall, I like to walk in the rain, and enjoy the damp smells of matted leaves under the dark eucalyptus, while drunken carousers roar from the corner. In the winter on the railroad ties, frost in the shadows of the iron bridge, and cool and quiet drafts from the hills that flow down the creek inspire an independence that is not the result of being told or being responsible, but native, native to the earth in a suffering no one can feel for you.