gathering raze i visited a park with a name that's the opposite of what i am sometimes. i thought it might give me a bit of a lift. it did that the last time i was there. but it's different when you're expecting something. the only animals i saw other than people were dogs, and they were too far away to tell me anything. i saw some garbage blowing around. empty plastic bags and discarded cloth face masks. the divining rod i found a few weeks ago was still there. one half of the forked side was broken. someone stepped on it, and whether they meant to or not, they robbed it of its power. the rain that came before there was any light this morning turned dirt to mud and grass to seaweed. i sloshed through the damp mess in search of a little bit of magic. i stared through a hole in the chest of a tree that let me see a piece of the sky, and a voice i've heard all my life said, "look over there. you should take a picture of that. it looks like a gathering of trees." a blur of hamamelis snaked around a family of depilated ash trees. a cluster of green wraiths holding hands. i eased the camera's shutter open and trusted the lens to capture some portion of what i saw so you could see it too. 220501 what's it to you? who go blather from