Saturday Night

It's another Saturday night ending this week as started alone again. I came here almost two years ago to my retirement hermitage but oddly, and often uncomfortably, shared with my hurt kids, mental and physical illness adopted and then adapted; an asylum for the perpetually incontinent. Cars pass by. Sometimes a loud motorcycle or two or three or four or even more here on the southern boundary of a county seat in a State where rural counties have been disenfranchised of political purpose. Our largest employers are two tribally owned casinos. One across the Thames River flowing past our backyard retreat. Our second largest income producer may be the County Courthouse where attorneys and police collude to extort voluntary donations from poor young adults red and yellow, black and white, guilty of speeding and texting and smoking medicine without a license in Great White Father's sight. I have been listening and watching for what this half acre is. We are not as rural as I had hoped, with State highway 12 too near my front yard, but this place is also not urban or suburban. What it is not, whom we are not, seems more clearly articulated than any positive definition, refining our becoming quiet place, alone together, shunned by healthier neighbors. It's another lonely ending anticipating yet another not new beginning tomorrows stretching out alone long retiring shadows on this southern edge of a Connecticut County Seat without apparent purpose or co-defining meaning.