We drove through Yellowstone
watching Old Faithful in ponchos, welcoming the geyser’s predictability. Blood (we knew) is half water. We drove with the radio low listening to unfamiliar stations, staring at bison herds dotting the prairie like raisin clumps. The rain stopped. We crossed over the Continental Divide splitting watershed without consensus between Pacific and Atlantic― the indifference of geology we call nature. Natural? a great caldera of pressure built by earthquake and fire and salt― not loss alone but loss of self. The rain resumed. Lines on the wet pavement blurred as we drove in the dead of night feeling the asphalt murmur, miles melting our wafer-hope. We drove on searching ourselves for second opinions, for absolution, reaching home― finding home was not what we had thought. A raisin is just a shriveled grape missing its water. Yet small things form a wedge as sure as any mountain peak parting rainfall flowing toward different seas. |