lightcatcher

bought this tiny window catcher at a thrift store in nc in mid-december, when i’d broken my strict road trip diet of seltzer and potato chips or boiled peanuts and cherry coke (state-dependent) to drive off-off-off the highway to tiny saluda, to eat bbq on the lush wintergreen porch of green river bbq, where the waitress’ southern drawl enveloped me like a familiar hug and quelled my fears that maybe people there would hate me because i look gay, because i am. she fawned over my calm n giant dog and brought out biscuits for dogs and biscuits for humans and 5 kinds of hot sauce and kept refilling my sweet tea, chattering all the while. i ordered all of her favorite sides (fried okra, tomato pie, collard greens, something like mac and cheese but with potatoes & better), and as i got back in the car to continue the 7 hour drive southward thru mtns and scrub pine and palmetto and salt marsh and swampland (home, home, home), a thrift store just across the way caught my eye - the kind that had burst its seams and left a trail of wicker baskets and garden gnomes and wrought iron lawn ornaments in its wake. left with a three dollar pair of used sneakers and this tiny square pane of pressed flowers that i meant to tuck into my friend’s humid, shortbread-scented kitchen as a parting gift, but realized i couldn’t part with it. and now it spins a slow pirouette in my window and catches the feisty flare of sunset over the catskills each night where i'm comforted by knowing that the sun is sinking sinking its westward descent. and that if i call my friend pat, who is 70, in 2 hours the rods and cones in his big blue eyes that have seen some things will be seeing the light that passed thru my little ephemeral florally glorious light catcher as he sits on his rocky mountain-top porch with his dog sammy and cat sparky and the surrounding wilderness for company