​Purity: With an Asterisk, by Mike Dillon

The Country Fair, Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish) ca. 1635

​Purity: With an Asterisk
 
Rubens and his writhing ganglion of drunken revelers. “The crowd is untruth,” wrote Kierkegaard. 
 
As for you: Remember that small, unfenced field and the cold stars above; everyone gathered around the keg, the stubby, silver barrel of veneration? Plastic cups of watery beer. High-school, hyena laughter. 
 
What were you doing there? 
 
Zola tells us of a farmer plowing in a dell in September 1870 while the Battle of Sedan raged close by. A consequential battle: the fall of Napoleon III, Prussian defeat of France, the Paris Commune. And the toxic seeds planted for future use. But the farmer plowed on, a Zen master who’d never heard of Zen. 
 
The man I still would be.
 
So, I put my finger to the wind, and go the other way. Though, sometimes, I confess, I glance back over my shoulder.
 
I, too, am not immune to the fear of missing out.

Mike Dillon

Mike Dillon lives in Indianola, Washington, a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle. His most recent book is a chapbook, The Return, from Finishing Line Press (Spring 2021), and is editor of the recently released (Oct. 2021) Notes from the Garden: The Making of a Pacific Northwest Sanctuary, from Chatwin Books. He is a previous contributor to The Ekphrastic Review.