THICK

From the bathroom window a committee of finches perch askew in every direction on the tree’s November branches. Something about the barren simplicity grabs me as I begin this day.

This is a thick time to be alive, I said recently.

The words rising from my body, much less my mind.

Do I mean thick like my spoon moving through cold honey slowly loosened into steaming tea?

Or the sap heavying in the bare branches around me. Or that unrested morning feeling of molasses in limbs — blood sludge before movement.

All that, yes, and thick with layers. I walk the rock ledges at Two Lights, where waves foam as they touch land. The layered stones are so compressed the rock looks like petrified wood.