a love letter for autumn

a day without capitalization

i spent the day with gabriel, lapping sunshine on a sandy beach on the banks of the potomac --
a place where no one usually comes save the friends I bring there once in a while. gabriel learns to swim little by little, letting water absorb into his desert skin while his attention focuses fully on the stick i've thrown; forgetting in the moment his intrinsic fear of water, eclipsed perhaps by a fear of not pleasing me by returning empty-handed. you know dogs.

the sand and sun and sparkling water conspire to relax us both until it is time to taste wine at the coop where they offer it some saturdays, organic from italy, and fruity tart like autumn

the irish inn is down the road.
so far, i've been there three times in the past year: once with a monk, once with a kurdish activist, and once with two school teachers, each enjoying different parts of the same me. the teachers met my collegial side; the kurd, the part of me who listens and talks about literature and writing; and the monk, he saw my sense of humor and my soul's deep yearning. it's funny how the mind spirals on a day like this.

i came home, drank a glass of the wine, and watched a movie recommended by a friend: Into the West, an Irish drama about how a horse and two boys escape the container of their lives through the power of their belief in each other. it is now that i don't know what to write, afraid as i often am to show the container of my life, but that is what is required eventually, isn't it? and so i will.

in another world, i would have courted a man i thought i recognized and had begun to love against logic and reason; but i hold the arrow still now when the target is moving. i put the arrow down and return to finding love in the water that shines and sparkles of god; my gabriel, his smile full of stick and sand, the love letter.