The world, simply enough, became as beautiful as it does to many children waking on a summer morning. - Jim Harrison

We set this house on fire forgetting that we live within.

If you live on the railroad tracks the train's going to hit you, Grandpa used to say. — Brown Dog

In 1958 a friend in San Francisco burned out his veins shooting up hot paregoric, a cheap high. It’s safer for me to continue smoldering just below the temperature of actual flame wondering if there’s a distant land where life freely flows like a river. Years ago in a high green pasture near timberline I watched a small black bear on its back rolling back and forth and shimmying to scratch its back, pawing the air with pleasure, not likely wanting to be anywhere or anyone else.