The Letting

''If I have ventured wrongly, very well, life then helps me with its penalty. 

But if I haven't ventured at all, who helps me then?" 

~Kierkegaard

Dinner was steamed summer vegetables

with brown rice, flatbread and 

wine from an unlabeled bottle. 

We sat on the floor 

on a Balinese handwoven rug

with pillows and herbs 

Without no electricity

a pot belly stove and candles

provided all the light we needed

After we ate, we talked

We finished the wine and

a hookah was taken down from its place 

A shoe box of fine keefer 

A tin of home made bitter chocolates and 

strawberries from the garden 

The richness of it all filled us up 

Its decadence made us sleepy and warm

He was a gracious and perfect host 

It may have been the comforts or

maybe my foolish youth but

when my friends were all asleep, I told him everything

I told him how it how it had begun

The flickering lights and

slamming doors that went on for weeks 

I told him bout the filthy roadside toilet 

and the junkie I'd left there to die 

in strangers' piss and filth

I told him about the vagrant and 

about how St Christopher had come to me in the night

when i could not sleep for days

I told him about the young witch 

who'd told me what I should do and

how his advice had worked.... for awhile 

I told him everything 

in desperation, like a fool but 

I had no choice. I didn't what else to do. 

"It's the reason I left the city.

it's why I'm on the road. 

I don't know what else to do, 

or even where I'm going"

He listened quietly and

when I finished he said 

"You're safe here inside my home 

inside these walls and inside our coven." 

He told me he couldn't intervene or

tell me what to do 

He was sorry, he said, for whatever I was into.

 

He said that we should go to sleep. 

That in the morning I'd meet his friends. 

It's the solstice, he said. We are planning a feast. 

I'd be honored if you and your friends would stay and

attend.

I waited until he'd fallen asleep then

I woke my friends.  We need to go, now

We quietly gathered our things and

went out to the van

Driving along the dirt road

through the dense redwoods

toward the highway

God rays from the moon

shone and flickered through

the high branches like sunlight

Jill and Amy and Jeff were silent

I asked Jill if she wanted me to drive

No, she said.  I'm fine

None of them ever asked

why we'd left like that

in the middle of the night.

Jeff and Amy and I

slept in the back while Jill 

drove into the dawn

 

Author's Note

A prosaic recollection of an evening I spent with a few of my friends, in a coven we stumbled upon while driving south from Mt. Angel.