Sticks and Stones Farm, Pot Luck Thursday Nights

Iced, the gravel path through the cedars doesn't crunch as I drive it tonight. Through the overhead glass doors, the big stone barn shines warmth out into the starlight. The dozer and backhoe loom hazy orange through the sheet of insulating clear plastic hung inside the rolled-down door. They crouch there in the makeshift hall, casting prehistoric shadows and looming like a playground for kids who won't listen. I'm the last to arrive: the table's set and the food is almost ready and there are four meats and no salad but nobody minds. I've brought winter ale, not wine. Someone throws another log in the stove to keep us warm through supper. We dance after dinner, separating circles that overlap and reform, distortions in the same flow, dance ourselves a river each week. Never twice the same, these steps we trace. Most of us dance and slide and swing and kick our socks off, crazy laughing until the rafters quake. Elliot will dance with me, but he won't be my boyfriend tonight-- not while his mother is holding him, even though he's seen what I can do with that aqua blue hula hoop. We shake some more, because it's sitting just right; we're all caught up, and nobody can shimmy like a four-year-old who's had an extra slice of chocolate pie. When the beer is gone, there's another pot of coffee for the road: not everyone lives so close, and the drive away is longest for me, so I help myself. I should just stay. The coffee makes me edgy, and I have spent all night building this calm inside. There's always more than enough beds at the farm, but home belongs to each on his own, tonight. The stones stand tall at the end of the drive, unmoving sentinels, lace-capped and lichened, unchanged as this quick flesh passes, resolute. The subtle colors of the frost hover in the dark, unrevealed to me in this diamond night. And then, I see: Moss is winter's soft jewel, a burgeoning cushion in this cold.