Full plates and a kitchen staff that moves in a million directions. The best dishes are usually not on the menu. Talking out of both sides of the mouth is the fastest way to end up silent. Cake. Pizza. A coffee to go. The best advise I ever got was when it’s done it’s done and the phone doesn’t ring anymore. I didn’t know exactly what that meant when I heard it twenty years ago, but as the saying goes had I known then what I know now. Truth. Say it. Live it. Two lines. An out and back. Washed up. Wash burned. A cabin on a lake. A stone fireplace. More beer cans than I’m comfortable with. I miss my friend and it’s dark and I have heartburn. Or is it heartache? Or is it the memory of depression? I’m not upset or mad or disappointed. I am accepting and I have a full heart. I understand and I also have boundaries. I have a fence with a gate around this beautiful house of mine in these beautiful woods along this beautiful river. All the way up here. All the way out here. Out here in no man’s land. Out here and over there and don’t bother calling again because the phone lines are down and the postman lost the address. Send it by pigeon from a rooftop in New York. Send it via telegram. Send it to somebody else because the gate doesn’t open and the mailbox just got emptied. Twenty years. Ten years. A handful and a shakers worth and we’re all racing to the same place. Go home, you’re drunk. Feeble. Fable. Stable. A bunch of horses running loose on the eastern plains. I’ll call it. For good. There’s a lot going on and I can tell it’s too much. Don’t bother coming back because nobody lives here anymore. They’ve all gone off to join the circus.