Alchemic Verse

The last leg of the journey complete, I’ve docked for the remainder of the month – pending my work insisting I head to Germany for a few weeks this month or next. My only real concern anymore is the well-being of this sweet pup who has been so brave to make it so far from where she called home… I guess I’ve been brave, too.

When I woke this morning before our sail, it was just light; a white-tailed stag lept at my approach to the back of the property, over the sagging section of chicken wire and 2ft bristling grasses. A small black buttefly with red stripes came to land inches away from where I blearily stood and watched, circling and landing closer and closer, until final checks were complete and we set sail.

The journey was heralded in time with the shuffled library of music by lively black birds cavorting between streetlamps in pair, soaring raptors gliding above traffic, dragonflies, and a single white bird when a song surfaced and I thought I might cry. “Don’t cry, baby, you’re driving. You gotta drive.”

The skies were a layer cake of cloud  over a lake with an apparently-important stranger’s name. It was surrounded by tangled and unfamiliar interchanges that would normally drain my knuckles white and admittedly did for a short bit, at least. Patience won my way through the high-speed labyrinth, choked with hundreds of barreling minotaur to avoid artfully, waiting for the horizon’s reappearance from behind the man-wrought mazes.

The open sky rewarded this perseverance, carrying me to the friendly vicinity of a different lake seemingly more logically named. I was greeted by a small young grasshopper springing into the car, a monarch butterfly followed to share a few minutes of my exhausted porch-sit. And now, writing from this new landing, the cicadas effortlessly massage the soundscape while I rock.

This slip is peaceful, if slightly more remote than I imagined. I had my favorite authentic Mexican foods and soda for din; groceries will be a task for tomorrow.

The car is half unpacked; I found the one bottle of wine I fit into the Car Tetris ™️, I’ve unearthed my luggage and toiletries finally, and the tiny butterfly plant sprout I brought has survived the journey.

Three tiny lives so far from where each began, feeling grateful for one another (can’t speak for the plant, but I assume) to have weathered the Grand Life Yeet of 2025… so far anyway.

Note: The AI generated tag on the featured image comes from having removed my car/the host’s car from the left corners.