I am like you, by turns terrified or resisting terror. Oh my ancestors I see what you were about. My great grandfather, a wheelwright in rural Finland built more than his share of baby coffins. He saw trees as signals of dark futures.
It is sobering and admissible to say it will never be any better. That it’s wrong is beside the point. Dark feelings have you by the throat. Who can argue with feelings?
I see what you were about Grand-Grand-Papa. It’s the argument with darkness makes tomorrow possible.
It’s the Finnish lullaby which was always a dirge.
**
Who can argue with feelings? What a foolish question. Even a house cat does it. It bites its tail.
Ah but the cat doesn’t worry about tomorrow.
It doesn’t have to examine the trees and think, “there’s a coffin in there.”
I don’t think I’d prefer the gritty phenomenology of the cat.
Still I’d like to reach back through history and tell my forebear: “some day the trees will just be trees, antibiotics are coming.”
**
In Finland they burn the dead winter grass.
Planet of the Blind 