On Sundays in Jack of the Wood

There’s an unplugged Irish session.

People just show up and start playing. It’s a hell of a thing,

watching violinists improvise.

They close their eyes and listen intently to each other, hardly moving

before slowly lifting chinrest to jaw, and then the bow moves.

After that, things go quiet in other areas of the world.

 

I drank Green Man

–from the cask, not the standard delivery, mind you.

Cara from Columbus sat next to me, and told me how

she met Hal on the Appalachian Trail.

“I just decided to do it, one day,” she said. “The AT.”

“I was heading in one direction, and he was headed in another.”

How else do things like that happen?

Cara and Hal moved in the same direction after that.

Neither one knew what was next, but they were looking

for a different place, separately.

They found it together.

“It’s not perfect,” she said, “but nothing is. We love each other.

And we’re figuring it out as we go.”

I looked up above the bottles and saw Jack looking back.

I thought about death and rebirth, and finished my pint.