There is a story

there is a story i tell. a story about suffering. not because we are only suffering, but because that is the story we have been taught to tell. take a beetle for instance. it talks of nothing other than the leaf it chews. the angularity of it. the soft brush underneath. there are many beetles. far more than there are humans. somehow our voices always drown them out. take crows for instance. they have been known to fish. not with their beaks but with fiberglass poles left behind by drunken fishermen. or maybe they were just sleeping. either way the crow speaks only of fish. the cold flesh. the fragile meat. in the story i tell myself there is often buffalo. not because they are prolific, but because they occupy the expanse of my memory, its continent. the buffalo are only a metaphor. the snow is also a metaphor. bodies blanketed in white. freezing. we are all rigid with it. the story. tell something different. something about the rain. the sound of it. like walking skyward. away from one’s origins. what has been culled from one atmosphere falling gently into another.