Feels like LA

(lower Arkansas)

Almost overnight the red oaks are reaching over the back deck, not as if to embrace but imprison. That’s how it feels at least. Too close. My wife and I talked last night on our evening walk of trimming them back, limbing ‘em. Mitigation is expensive she said. I said Everything is.

My Cath-lick friend in NA (north Arkansas) texts he’s about to start his prayers. I like the sound of that. And I believe him. I text back Keep praying for my son. Will my friend light candles? Kneel and kiss the crossed crucifixed feet? Stand and finger the beads? Hell if I know. He can stand on his head for all I care. Just pray.

This friend and I both grew tall in evangelical fields buzzing like bees with sinner’s prayers and potlucks and bow your head/close your eyes and When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder. We were there alright. We were boys then. As men we set out for older growth pastures. We became aware of the possibility of “the search…to be onto something” (Walker Percy). We both had our reasons, but the general gist? Things got too close, what was once an embrace became a prison. A mitigation was in order. It was expensive. Still feels that way to me at times. I live, as Frank Stanford wrote, “like a dragonfly on a dog chain.”

There are those who refer to what I’m talking about as deconstruction. I call it growing up.

My friend and I both reside now in Arkansas—the South, the country of moon and magnolia. He never left. I left and came back. Seth Haines kicks at the darkness with camera and pen. Me mostly pen, although I have dreamt of a used Leica. But even used, lord they’re expensive. Then again, everything is.