A Pirate’s Winter, a Garlic’s Root, and the Quiet Season of Becoming
Sitting out under the Milky Way,
earpods in, volume low enough that the snow itself can still be heard falling.
Jimmy sings to me like an old friend who already knows the whole story:
Lookin’ back at my background
tryin’ to figure out how I ever got here
Some things are still a mystery to me
while others are much too clear
I’m just livin’ in the sunshine
stay contented most of the time
Yeah, listenin’ to Murphy, Walker and Willis
sing me their Texas rhymes
Now most of the people who retire in Florida
are wrinkled and they lean on a crutch
Mobile homes are smotherin’ my keys
I hate those bastards so much
I wish a summer squall would blow them
all the way up to fantasy land
They’re ugly and square, they don’t belong here
They’d look a lot better as beer cans
Yeah, that’s why it’s still a mystery to me
why some people live like they do
So many nice things happenin’ out there
they never even seen the clues
Whoa, but we’re doin’ fine, we can travel and rhyme
I know we been doin’ our part
Got a Caribbean soul I can barely control
and some Texas hidden here in my heart
Well now, I might have joined the merchant marine
if I hadn’t learned how to sing
And on top of that I got married too early
cost me much more than a ring
But those crazy days are over
you just got to learn from the wrong things you’ve done
I came off the rebound, started lookin’ around
figured out it’s time to have a little fun
Well now, if I ever live to be an old man
I’m gonna sail down to Martinique
I’m gonna buy me a sweat-stained Bogart suit
and an African parakeet
And then I’ll sit him on my shoulder
and open up my trusty old mind
I’m gonna teach him how to fuss
teach him how to cuss
and pull the cork out of a bottle of wine…
The last chord fades into the cold.
I pull the earpods out, let the silence settle.
The teepee is quiet tonight.
No names, no dates, no banners.
Just canvas breathing with the wind and a small fire that knows how to keep a secret.
Just canvas breathing with the wind and a small fire that knows how to keep a secret.
Outside, the world is mid-winter: everything that looked dead in November is secretly putting down roots.
Garlic cloves, wheat berries, buffalo grass seeds; each one has cracked its coat in the dark and is drinking cold like medicine.
Nothing dramatic is happening on the surface.
That is the whole point.
Inside the lodge, the fire settles into coals the color of a conch shell at dawn.
An old song drifts through the smoke, barely louder than the crackle:
“I’ve got a Caribbean soul I can barely control…”
and the song is not about escape anymore.
It is about return.
Return to the exact temperature at which the heart can rest without freezing or burning.
Someone (maybe you, maybe the person reading this) sits cross-legged on a folded blanket.
No watch, no phone, no tomorrow yet.
The only clock is the slow drip of pine pitch into flame.
Every breath is a boat drink offered to the dark.
Every exhale is the dark drinking it back.
This is the season the Lakota call waniyetu, the time when stories are born in summer are allowed to die so new ones can be born.
The same season the pirate spends in dry dock, patching sails with nothing but patience.
In the same season, the farmer trusts the field to do its invisible work under snow.
Nothing is wasted here.
Not the cold, not the silence, not the long nights when the mind finally stops negotiating with itself.
The coals shift.
A single spark rises, hangs, and disappears into the smoke hole like a quiet promise.
Outside, the garlic has already sent down a root longer than its future shoot will ever be.
Inside, the human animal has already remembered it is mostly water and starlight, and that both are welcome to stay.
No hurry.
Spring is not a reward; it is a consequence.
When the fire is only memory, and the eastern sky begins to pale, the person on the blanket stands up slowly, knees cracking like thin ice, and steps out into the cold that no longer feels like an enemy.
The wheat has not sprouted yet.
The pirate has not weighed anchor yet.
But both know, without words, that the waiting was the voyage.
And somewhere, very far away and very close, a parrot-headed soul smiles in his sleep and whispers the only line that still matters:
“If the phone doesn’t ring…
it’s me, calling you home.”
Boat drinks, brothers and sisters.
The teepee is warm.
The dark is doing its work.
See you when the garlic greens.