a blessing for vineland

Awake at three-thirty. Perilous.

Perilous this time of year, what with first light coming on apace, scattering sleep, rousing birds.

When I lived in the far north, in southern England where the latitude is fifty-two, June darkness was a blip and January darkness something you tried not to think about. Here in the south, the Deep South of Canada, it’s only lat forty-three but June’s still an eye-opener. Here in (looks around) many-tendril’d vineland, which is as much an ethos as a peninsula. Small v, I guess, because it’s a principle.

Vineland, whoah. I’m a newcomer. A discoverer.

It’s viney here. In the woods atop the escarpment, trees live short, broken lives, but vines thrive. Poisonous or semi-poisonous or merely tree-throttling, ivies thrive, writhe. Good witches and bad witches in contest for the terrain, that’s the feel of it. A scatter of small limestone caves could contain everything except a man. The mountain itself racinates, roots, writhes. Light flickers as you walk and your next footfall could be rock or root, rooty rock. Is that rocks or root? There’s a spirit of petrifaction, of life rocking, rocking up. Vineland. The locals have named one of the hamlets Vineland, as if to keep the wayward tentacles contained, but it’s all vineland. Viney, snakey. A place of altered perceptions. Dreamy.

At the corner of Victoria and King there was a burned building and no one cleared it away for a year and the official sign hadn’t burned so it was like a caption for the scene and it said Welcome To Vineland. Official.

The witching hour is that first niggling sense that maybe you’re not going to go back to sleep. You sleep in cycles of light to deep to light, riding a rollercoaster, a sinewave, and maybe on your third cycle your little car coasts to a stop atop a long wave. What’s it gonna be? The view’s good. Too good, so keep your eyes shut. The birds are quiet, the highway a mile-and-a-half off is quiet. But energy’s gathering. There’s no dawn but dawn is coming into being as an idea.

The ghosts gather but you don’t have to notice. There’s a subtle power in not acknowledging the ghosts, the usual perps. Spirits of betrayal, of missed opportunity, they’re going to ride in on the dawn if you let them.

This time I tried saying “blessing” to each of the ghosts. Blessing, blessing, blessing. It was that or contention. Blessing, blessing. I tried thinking bless, bless, but it was too much like the French blessure, injury, so I inged it. Ingland, not France. Blessing.

And then it was 7:15.