THE MORNING STAR (WHICH YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY FOR A FEW REASONS)

It was early and we were trying to beat the heat and the crowds both. We were up with the morning star and out on our way. Reluctant for a second to say ‘morning star’ because it’s generic, prosaic, colloquial to say star. That is why Charles Bukowski said somewhere not to ever, ever use the word ‘star.’ Also, - if I remember correctly, - Behold a Pale Horse author, - William Cooper, said that Lucifer was referred to as the morning star. Now that’s not good! But both are dead, - one from cancer and one from a shootout with the police. Besides, - when I say morning star, I simply mean the sun, - without symbol, allusion, reference, mythology, and so on. The morning star, the sun, - is more than enough. What else could you need? And I noticed the farmer was up with such- and probably is- old but spry and alert, - driving, walking, and talking. Yesterday he was cutting down trees and driving a tractor. Who would need books and writing and silly romantic notions, French Existentialism, Camus, et al.?- American nonsense like bad boy Henry Miller? - who even needs Captain Ahab?- if you own a forest?

Anyways, - we went along there and were greeted with the shade and the breeze and the

solitude. Old woodchips and new shavings, - ferns, chaparral, logs, moss, all the usual suspects. It was the borderline hour coming up, - and could be discerned by a keen sense of feeling, - that it was soon going to go from comfortable to ‘too hot.’ We looked upon some wild flowers in the opening at the end that held purple, pink, red, and white all at once. They seem to have a wonderful scent and I thought often upon seeing them of Baum’s Wizard of Oz, - of the field or hills where Dorothy and her group are lulled fast asleep by the wafted tides of languid scents. Passing by there without slumber,- we looked at sand and a little river bed,- then went inside of the opening and saw crickets, vacant spider webs perhaps abandoned,- and much more. We walked and walked, - but slowly. Old tree fallen over, - the sound of squirrels. Tessa brought back the leg of a deer. - But I don’t know how she found it or exactly where. The coyotes must have caught it and eaten it in the night, leaving or being scared away by someone or something before they could do anything with the leg.

Possibly it was the morning star that caught their attention and told them to retreat, recoil, renounce….

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