going back like a ghost

today i went back to chacon. i'm still getting my crap outta there if you can believe it. i hadn't been up there in month since last time i went i collided with another truck on the icy road to my house (crumpled and tore the front corner of my poor old truck) and when i got to the property the snow was so bad i couldn't even pull in the driveway or get the damn gate open.
so today, after a spell of warm weather, i went back.
i fight back emotion of any kind while i'm there. the chill in the air frightens me. feels like not enough and brittle viligance. I stumble through the mud and snow gathering things up as fast as i can.
i don't stop to look around.
see...here at my new home i sometimes am overcome with body memories of pulling open the back door, heading outside, the sounds, the view, how my body knew the pathways of routine there, the horizons curving mountains. how i made that backdoor with my own hands. and its hard, these memories are hard. memories like that of a lost lover, how they smelled ...how they moved...what they needed.
so i passed through today just a ghost swirling around like the dust on the old wooden floor. i didn't connect.
i kept a lid on grief.
a lid on lost.
the whole valley struck me sad poor and sleeping. its a hard time of year for rural mountain folk.
always the obligatory walmart bags caught flapping on barbed wire fences.
always dead animals in the road.

but i'm back on the farm now with a truck load of crap. I brought down my solar power which i've really missed. and all my books of poetry...so many poets. and my paintings from a decade ago....an old trunk full of old stuff....and a tin bucket full of my funny mismatched old dishes, which i've also really missed
and my hoe
and rake
and pitchfork.
tools for new pathways.