Today, all uninvited, the beast conjured from skull and sheet and ribbons, that haunted my father and through him came to haunt me, arrived not by night in the dead of winter, as it once did with him, but in the back of a car on a bright, sunny morning. And not to do battle this time, but stepping out of the distant past to tread a stately pavane with me under the holly tree in our orchard. Jack barked and proffered his frisbee for play. The rooks called and collared doves fluttered softly about their nests. The circle has closed, at last.
I live in an Appalachian hollow in the Juniata watershed of central Pennsylvania, and spend a great deal of time walking in the woods. Here’s a bio. All of my writing here is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For attribution in printed material, my name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact me for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).