How to Move to Canada 1. The family of all things, as Mary Oliver put it, is where we struggle to find our place. When I think of my father's love and the legacy of love he left, I see myself standing there. Then I think of my mother and her grief in the wake of him disappearing across the distant horizon where the river empties itself into the ocean and the sun sets for us all. But then I think of this dawn, this sunrise on the river where I stand among the wild geese and ducks who seem to acknowledge my place in a new way this morning, moving around me with ancient love and welcoming me even as they send me on my way to where every movement is a standing still in the family of things and where I will claim my proper place to give love and receive it. 2. Sunrise separates the night from the day. And on this day I'm driving away from the gray with lightning and hail at my back and the music of the mysterious mountains before me, the imprint of the constantly changing dance of light and dark and meaning and chaos playing out like a piano scroll made of dark pavement and painted lines and rumble strips keeping me in line. I repent of my too harsh judgments of friends and loved ones in this election year even as I turn my back on them to drive away. I wish them well as I hold my lover's hand and smile at the golden glowing horizon calmly racing towards me at the speed of music, changing, changing, changing, changed. 3. Sunrise off the interstate syncopates our Montana sojourn waking up in Billings to the music of regrets merging into a melody of love’s momentous consolation in the family of things, in shared memories and plans, in the motel breakfast buffet, in the foibles of friendship and the knowing what not to say when politics and friendship collide. At the Wyoming state line meadowlarks begin to sing in earnest with cricket chorus, and the smell of wild flowers — despite horrific history — triggers a beatific vision of yin and yang united like the rolling hills and sky carrying us past Sheridan through a landscape rife with ghosts to get the car washed in Gillette on the way to the Devils Tower. 4. From Devils Tower in Wyoming to the Black Hills of South Dakota, arriving on the set of the old west Deadwood and tracing the footsteps of Wild Bill and Seth Bullock to await the dawn over the presidential district, we walk the gulch and gawk at fellow gawkers hearkening back to the 1800s and keenly felt in the inner truth of the present madness afflicting these United States and all of us teetering on the edges of our own souls' devils' towers' pinacles where flowers grow unseen and from where we rappel back down assisted by the frayed ropes of a broken-down democracy, hoping that in the sunrise of love we might find our way past Mount Rushmore and on to Birchbark Books in Minneapolis where stories, poems, and truth reside. 5. Four Future Afterthoughts Foretold from the Past 1. Nourishment Out in front of Birchbark Books, my beloved and I having driven across from Seattle — a literary pilgrimage — we press pause on The Night Watchman and pay homage to Louise. 2. Treading Carefully At nearby Kenwood Park, we walk past a playground noisy with girls and tread carefully around dangers left by bad dog owners, everyone observing Juneteenth calmly despite blue jays screeching. 3. Careful Affection We find a picnic table — a solid symbol of the solidity of our marriage — and sit a while, I writing, she reading yet another book while stretching her good and bad leg. 4. Attention to Detail Slowly and steadily we go back to the car to resume our journey toward Montreal where we will unpack my things with care in a couple of days and turn the page of a new book. 6. The Sleepy Hollow Motel, between the thumb and forefinger of westernmost Gitche Gumee, is where my love and I lie in the innocence of love and the guilt of humankind. We’ve dined on peanut butter and bread and the last few ounces of the Monkey’s Shoulder we brought with us from Washington State (a gift from a Spokane friend, now transformed to emptiness). And now, after making love, we sink into the innocence of sleep, with thoughts of Bob Dylan’s childhood home in the hills of old Duluth, regretting not visiting the typewriters of the Hunker Bunker and Mr and Mrs Peterson on the other side of the bridge. We wish them well and travel on in innocence and guilt to seek the next horizon. 7. The border guards raised their eyebrows at the amount of stuff we were hauling into Canada from the land of the insane to the south. So we had to get out and make an accounting. A friendly interrogation ensued, since the mutual love between our two lands persists despite ongoing questions about obliviousness and drunken driving of the ship of state. My love and I answered their questions satisfactorily and continued on our way persisting in our own love mutually arrived at years ago and now reaching a turning point of stability between north and south, the compass of mutual attraction ceasing to spin as madly now as in the past, but still pointing us to one another. 8. How to Move to Canada is the title of a book snagged from a Free Little Library and packed up with the thousand things jammed into my ailing Highlander and squeezed through the needle's eye of Sault Ste. Marie, mon amour in the passenger seat and navigating along the northern shore of Lake Huron through Sturgeon Falls, with a stop for lunch and to see her lovely tante et oncle. I am neither a rich man nor a camel, but I do have a heart full of love and many bright ideas floating in my head, not to mention an advanced degree or two and a fairly clean criminal record and bill of health to help make my case, gently and humbly, to the office of immigration as the sun rises at its northernmost point on the Montreal horizon. 9. "Decrease combined with sincerity" is what this morning's I Ching reading suggests I meditate upon. Canada the mountain above, America the lake below, Myself the evaporation of liquid water into drifting clouds heavy with the bounty of the rain to be transubstantiated into the gifts of grapes and wine and, flowing with the river, love pouring into the simplicity of the vast and mysterious sea. Not hesitating to help when help is needed — but with sensitive awareness — is an element of this release of assertion. But to do so with one's dignity preserved — a stranger in a strange land — is also paramount when one's home is no longer separate but joined at the culmination of a long journey together that ends precisely at a new beginning. 10. Four Past Foretellings Retrieved from the Future 1. Innocence (The Unexpected) At each turning of the road we catch glimpses of these future memories of the passing past filled with wonder and surprise at the one shining moment that encompasses us all. 2. Influence (Wooing) The persistence of influence — your wooing of me, my wooing of you — is our journey to the vanishing point of love, the inner summer solstice of our being with each other. 3. Decrease A vision at the border arises from the one side meeting with the other like a match striking and decreasing itself in a sparkling flare, dying only to increase. 4. The Receptive Nature in contrast to spirit, darkness in contrast to the light, gentleness in contrast to force — not in opposition but joined in the eternal song and dance that has brought us to this moment.

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