ripples
I made one more trip to New York before Aunt Jin died, certain I'd see her soon down the Potomac. I first met her on the Gulf of Mexico, a long line cast to lure me to the Hudson. We spent the day talking with her caretakers, the neighbors, and the new parents moving in.
She sent me home with a table that I refinished waiting for the wake. Gravitational collapse calling the exploratory back to the island. Star. Starlight.
After the funeral I queued up "New Orleans Funeral Jazz", which is a thing you can do on a whim these days, and schooled up to race the body to the grave. We gathered inside a stone pavilion lined with the seals of the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, and Navy, two versions for them. A friend from Lake Winnipesaukee said a prayer and we left roses for the dead as we departed.
The gas light flipped on outside of Calverton and I thought about swimming to New Jersey or backfloating back to Sebastian Beach. Some foreward thinking spirit saw fit to build a gas station, and another to pack a snack for the drive, stockpiled for the mail carriers in the summer drought, and the ghosts of the past scared away the island fever long enough to drift to Jericho for nostalgia and salmon.
The sails were tattered by then, half my legs replaced with pegs, all my eyes patched, and my connection to the Internet severed, the dregs of bandwidth drained by "Party Hits" on the way from the cemetery. I managed to follow the signs to Queens after lunch but the Belt Parkway Portal appeared mysteriously near the airport to drop me in the Caribbean, a confluence of strange seas. I anchored on a small island I recognized from a story I once heard in West Philly and followed sunrise and sunset north to Wissahickon.
I found the dogs waiting for a walk, an opportunity to catch up with the squirrels on the last two weeks of life, and the next two minutes, generations, autumns. We landed somewhere in the present, fixed to Jeopardy. Terrible Terry, a skunk's critique of the air freshener in the outhouse behind the landfill. Brent's bonus 100k on Wheel. Giants and Steelers tied 9-9 at the half.