The smallest god is the god of small things

I keep a little notebook, cardboard around worn pages, in which I write the things that I might file for this archive. Today on that pad I inscribed a phrase that has become the title of this post, a phrase that is really for the post below, a post I pretended was yesterday's deposit but is a snippet of Sunday breakfast table.

I've been thinking all weekend of lares et penates, the household gods who do not know the sky, little divinities who watch after soap, bruises, clementines and dropped magnets. I've been thinking I prefer them to thunderous destinies. I have been thinking how easy to make of the house a church. These small gods watch the notebook I keep. They ask me to record the view from the porch of the Six Month House, inscribe the sound of citrus in a red bowl, fight in vain small ways against a world full of death, loose words that the words not become lost yet.