I have done every wrong thing, but in the name of right.
I have cheated women. I have twisted truths. I have admitted only for the effect it brings. I have returned things thieved only for the benefit of relieving my guilt. I have made solemn promises and found rationalities for bending them. I have profited from grace while stringently withholding that necessary virtue from others. I have lived on the scraps of Hermès as a traveler.
I have wept at my own unfittedness, my life’s incongruity, my loss of hope in tepid love. I have become the books I eat. I have said the truths that serve no one but themselves in honest and harsh words so that if nothing else, their effect will be remembered, and perhaps one day examined when the world slows down for a deep breath, a campfire in the desert night–for a coyote’s tale.
But I have left scraps too. I have begrudgingly paid the everyman’s dues. I have given great love and sang songs and delivered towering panegyrics. I have taught my ways to those too straight-laced to consider a bend, and thereby delivered them from themselves or a tyrant. I have breathed excited breath into flattened lungs. I have made resilient my fellows by sharpening their talons and confounding their brows.
I have paid the price for my way. And upon it, I suppose I have no choice but to wander further. Perhaps I will lay down beside this tree. A chance nut may fall and feed me, or a squirrel may need a friendly ear to hear his wisdom, or his woes.
My deeds grant me eternal spirit, exemption, unruliness, a heaven run, a dirty footed grounding, food for sustenance; the oldest exchange—a treat for a trick.