First of.

I’m grateful for another year calling in sick on Solstice, wondering how long it’ll take before anyone notices the pattern. Another pretty sunshine-y December day, even if the water’s low and the fishing sucks. I’m grateful for the dead elm along the road that sheds oyster mushrooms after rains, even if it’s only pinning now.

I listened to A Christmas Carol the other night, and I’m grateful for the leaning cedar under the gazebo, in a five gallon bucket, in the evaporating railroad town I drive through. If I ever won the Powerball I’d buy them twelve-foot tree and all the lights and two hundred gift cards, each in an envelope for every individual resident. I’d dress up as Santa and set it all up in the middle of the night and leave it there for them to find Christmas morning. I’d buy ten hams and host a potluck, a stranger, for no other reason than they need it.

I miss a hit wondering whether warblers miss the gnarled chinkapins as they roost in Panama, or vice versa. Everything I read and hear tells me it’s all about the fish, even when we say it isn’t.

I’m still waiting on that epiphany.