Seats of State

Nobody asked but …

I have lived in the seats of the state most of my life.  Frankfort KY, Boston MA, Springfield IL, Denver CO, Hartford, CT.  Yet today, at an advanced age, standing in my daughter’s backyard, on a cliff overlooking the gorge of the Kentucky River as it cuts its double horseshoe through the Bluegrass hills, I realize for the first time:  all the finery, the window dressing, is but an anchor for keeping the ship of state at its moorage.

The marble and its architecture, the splendid gardens, the statuary and the monuments, the historic shrines are placeholders.  Declarations of the immovable objects are such that we cannot lightly consider folding it up and putting it in the attic.

One does not visit an amusement park to ponder serious matters, just as one does not spend long in the seats of the state to give up parasitic dreams of power.

— Kilgore Forelle

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