intermittent montana mode

We are hitting the road and headed somewhere above the timberline. This is a photo from the last trip- taken in August. Skiers who want to say they skiied every month of the year come here. What they ski down, they hike back up. We'll be there to watch. 

See the dot of black 1/3 from the top of the snowfield? That is a skier.

I'm packing a camera, a journal, my favorite black pen. A winter coat and summer shorts, my favorite hiking shoes. Laptop and Blackberry are coming, too -- but when you don't hear from me you'll know the reason why. There are no towers here.

from koko to kwibi to speaking star

I've been working on a poem for the past year. Perhaps I should say the poem is working on me. It features a young girl not fitting in with society, running sidehill trails and sleeping in the forest beneath the stars -- wanting to speak deer, to speak star.

It's been suggested to me deer don't speak and stars most definitely cannot communicate. The little girl in me disagrees. Watch a fawn listen to her mother. Come between the doe and her fawn and you will realize mother is talking to her fawn, letting her know to freeze and when it might be safe to bolt. The little girl in my poem wants to know how that might feel to be able to tap into that language, that communication.

Yesterday I was working on this poem again, wondering how I might fix the poem so that those who don't believe in language being any other than human might be able to feel what is being shared in the poem. I didn't make any headway and put the poem away. But (!) today, I signed into Facebook and followed the long thread Amy Tan started on language. She has made plans to visit Koko the gorilla. Do you remember Koko? Click here to watch Koko read books and sign with trainers.

Watching Koko's sensitive imagination led me to the video of Kwibi. Kwibi was released back into the wild after spending his first five years with humans. His trainer tracked him down in the wilds for a reunion. Maybe the trainer was unprepared for Kwibi's emotions (?) -- I know I was not prepared. Now, I want to learn to speak gorilla.

shot of sixty years

Sunday Stills posts a prompt each week for photography. This Sunday the call is for history -- anything sixty or more years old. Last Sunday right before the tornado hit, we were running the pups along the river when we came across this fallen cottonwood. Bark and limbs are long gone but not the carved pledge. I'm sure it was meant to last forever -- the pledge and the carving. This reminded me of a poem  from my cynical years. You'll find it below this photo. Cynicism or love -- which lasts longer than sixty years?

Sometimes Becky Needs a Birch Canoe

I woke today, recalling a poem about Becky–
she maintained endless faith by taking long walks
to remind herself how winter circles
with killing frost, with quiet drifting snow;
that brown bears curl first, then settle
while crows caw over wheat field stubble.

              just as brown bears rise, just as robins nest

She’d break trail through last night’s crust,
slip through barbed wire fenced against the frozen
marsh. Along the bank of Driver’s Creek
she’d search for yet another note from him–
twined and twigged, a knotted braid
of regret and faith, dangling from a blade.

            carve me out another chance on the bark of this white birch

I imagined their tree: criss-crossed with pledges
of their love, but sometimes I’d find myself wanting
to step inside that poem–take that blade
from her naïve hand, ax the tree, build
a canoe and float her down river,
away from him, hoping
she’d come to her senses.

 
This poem was first published in Prick of the Spindle

you are here

Between where he sleeps and where he buys his milk, a woman begs for money. She's there every day but he doesn't always see her.

Yesterday, caught in his own trauma, he felt the magnitude of hers. When he handed her a five dollar bill, her hand touched his. His eyes filled with tears. 

Since then he's been sorting out what all this means. Everyone is so caught up in finding his own Einstein, he tells me, we don't learn from what is here.

through his rear-view mirror

He hadn't meant to crop from this photo the rearview mirror that framed it. He hadn't meant to drive past the herd of antelope until he had driven by and realized the view from his mirror was memorable.

Next year my father will be eighty years old.

A few months ago, he posted a message on the web, looking for more relatives. Over the past five or six decades, he has mapped a family tree of Irish relatives with roots which trace from here to halfway to the moon. The Irish side of the moon, of course.

Last time I was home to visit, he had just returned from an expedition which spent a rainy day tracking the tracks of Mullan Road, a road that led to the slaughter of seven hundred horses. He was anxious to get back to his computer -- he had email waiting to be read from someone new who was living somewhere else in the world and was related to the same great grandmother. Camera still strapped around his neck, he glanced into the kitchen where all sorts of his family (the leaves of his family tree) were preparing a turkey dinner. He shared a distracted wave and hello and retreated to his den.

 

aung san, tan and jackson

Aung San Suu Kyi

This photo reflects the serenity we could tap into when we quit trying to feel serene. Too often I think I will have a serene moment after the dishes are done, the lawn is mowed, the bills are paid, the money is earned, all my flowers grown, and every trespass blessed. And all my words written in chapter form.

Serenity can be found in chaos, with dirty dishes in the sink, without every flower bloomed. For Aung San Suu Kyi, it can be found under house arrest. A political prisoner of Myanmar (fka Burma) for 15 of the past 21 years, she speaks of courage and forgiveness. She lives free from fear, all the while under house arrest and restricted from seeing her sons who live in Britain. When we hate, we allow fear entry to our hearts. With her love for all she leads us towards no fear.

I might have finished writing the bio of Aung San Suu Kyi sooner had I not stopped so often to examine my own fears. At times I felt I might sprawl out on her sofa -- if she still had one -- to experience the flow of her wise words wash over me.

Facing fear and/or not facing fear is a familiar theme. Fear of grief tops the list for me. I used to practice for it all the time. Some say that is Way Irish. I've learned it doesn't help to practice our sorrows early. Last year at this time when a handful of my life's pieces were up in the air, I was writing the bio of Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club. Tan had lost her best friend and editor but didn't lose her friend's wise words: grief is finding the real heart of a story. Grief is what helps us reach the center of humanity and the balance of life contained within.

Between the Tan and Aung San Suu Kyi projects, I was asked to write a serious bio of Michael Jackson. Last year at this time, he passed away before he could find that balance of serenity each of us pursue. Researching and writing Jackson's life story twanged on my heart. Clear away the debris of drama and the spectacular, one finds that center of humanity Tan found in her life. Jackson didn't live long enough to learn what Tan shares in her work. Jackson didn't live the life that could bring him the serenity Aung San Suu Kyi embraces all the while under lock and key. Finding the redeeming quality in each of us is core to Aung San Suu Kyi.

Morgan Reynolds Publishing has earned a fine reputation for its extensive collection of serious non-fiction it publishes for young adults. I'm rather pleased to announce the Jackson book, Spin, has reached the warehouses and bookshelves just this week. Tan's bio will follow, but meanwhile I've been putting the final touches on Aung San Suu Kyi's bio. Her country is gearing up for an election while she is under house-arrest. Perhaps if the election serves the junta regime well, her sentence might be commuted and she will be allowed to step away from her house. Each of these three people have touched my life this past year as I've written their biographies for a publishing company which feels there are solid lasting lessons to be learned when we read their books -- a touch of serenity, even.

Reztoration

Reztoration

I sailed skylines on a scrap of silk
until I lost my fizz. My sparkle.
He called it carbonation.

He found me with the bees; head
in hand, I was slumped with woe.
I called this my crash landing.

He filled an empty mason jar
with eleven Zs from the buzzing
harvest. Unweaving web

from forest shade, he mended
the way I flew. Call it Kizz, or
call it Rize. Our horizons blurred.



Previously published in Prick of the Spindle. Click here.

incident ahead

My routine route to and from work each day follows the tornado's Sunday path. Hot pink wind-proof signs and electronic reader boards flash warnings on the highway that cuts down from the cliffs that separate our area of town from the rest of town: Incident ahead.


After the incident was done incidenting, we had crawled out of the crawl space underneath my house -- dismayed to find so much hail damage to the five vehicles parked outside my home. While we were hunkered down in the hunker space (we renamed it while we were there), we texted and called those who matter the most to us. Once we reached everyone and knew they were safe, it was easier to ride out the storm. I had always heard about how loud a tornado gets right before it strikes, so as long as we didn't have to shout to each other, I assumed we were out of the tornado's path - which we saw through our kitchen window right before we grabbed the pups and cell phones and took shelter.

Once the tornado sirens ceased their wailings, I studied my son's body language after he came back inside from investigating the damage outside my home. Hard to lose out to a hail storm -- but then our phones began to ring. Friends wanting to know if we were okay and letting us know of the damage done just a few blocks from where we were. A best friend's home flooded with eight feet of standing water in the basement was the hardest to hear. A street's length of businesses and one of the largest structures in our state were destroyed when the tornado touched down. Miracles of miracles, no one was injured. It didn't take but a moment for each of us to realize what might have been if only. I watched my son's body language change into an expression of blessing. Pure bless is what we've since named how it feels to come so close to an incident.

we interrupt this program

straight up

When was the last time you looked straight up a flag pole? he asked. I thought -- what does it mean to live straight up?

Interview with a Kulak from 1937

she buries money in the backyard

never writes a check

even now

she closes her window during coffee talks
with her closest friend

Oma says no when I ask her to tell

me more

            but what about when

she scolded me

she knew the rumble

when we felt it, before we saw

the tank cross the Lockwood Bridge

searching for the Veterans Day parade
marching through downtown
how she twisted

my hand in hers

slipping half

her rosary to me

though her Bible sits in sunlight on her table

she remembers hiding

wrapping it in burlap beneath floor boards

her father’s boot
between it and a soldier’s gun

I hope the tank will come our way I said

she said we can’t tell

if that tank will turn and so
we shouldn’t stay.

        ***

Where to begin and how far to go before stopping in this post? The Schtamhalter is what my former in-laws call my son -- the only one left to carry on the family name.

When I was still married into this German family from the Ukraine, I pestered Oma, my then mother-in-law, with questions her children hadn't asked. Her answers speak of slipping off to the Turkish border only to be turned back; of a milk cow being traded in order to get the women off the cattle train in Poland; of family being shipped to Siberia and never heard from again.

Opa and Oma had the wherewithal (I would so much like to ask Oma now what the word for that would be) to hide in a root cellar for three weeks and then sneak off in a milk wagon filled with a handful of others willing to risk the escape to Eastern Europe in 1941. Their four years of living on the road as displaced people eventually resulted in sponsored passage to a small farming community in Montana where the father of my children was eventually born -- the only one of his siblings born in a free country.

This next part is best told if I fast forward through my married years to their son. One day I shocked everyone by walking away from it all. I felt like a traitor to all they held dear, this family of in-laws who had gone through so much. But I did what I did and hoped one day they might come to understand. Would they find a way to forgive? I admit to this being a nervous question I've carried in my Irish bag of worries and what-if heavy burdens.

A few weeks ago when my daughter and I were back home (while our beloved Schtamhalter was left behind to work the weekend and watch the pups for me.) I was invited to have pizza with the entire family, my daughter at my side. (Or, at my daughter's side was me.)

Oma is 85 now. Opa passed away eleven years ago. The family realizes Opa and Oma's story might go away unless someone writes it down. The night my brother treated me to a view of the American flag flying at full mast in half-darkness was the same night I was asked if I might write Oma's story.

I like to think the two go hand-in-hand. Some of us will do what we have to do in order to be free, though we have no way of knowing how things will work out in the end. And when is The End, anyways? Life is too short and too dear to go at it in any other fashion than  -- straight up.

trespass

One year my Christmas tree stayed in its stand until March before I hauled it outside to the curb. Twisted girl that I am, there are fluctuating moments in my life when I recall that year fondly. Maybe what I mean is painfully. That year I thought life had trespassed  me.

My brother talked me through those times. Told me  that when we learn everything we need can fit inside one Wal-Mart bag, then we've learned a liberating  lesson. And now, some years later, we retalked this in the cab of his 1960 Dodge.  Brother, daughter, dog and me. This is the brother who is good at restoring things. Once this pickup gets back to what it was originally meant to be, he will start on something else.

We were on our way to walking his latest dog along the river. This one had been rescued hours shy of being put down at the shelter. Eight months of constant care, she was a new and different dog. How far could I walk, he asked.  Five miles? Eight? He had things to show us. He stood along the river bank, pointing downstream. From here to there and back?       

Yes.

Sometimes the best path means losing sight of the river for awhile,

a bit of trespass might be involved, he said.

Slow talk, long walk --we watched his dog chase gophers. This is the brother with some of the best story-telling ways. It's all about pacing with a few teasing touches, he explained to my daughter. The longer we walked, the more she grinned -- she knew where we were going. No matter which part of my family we spend time with when we visit Back Home, she's discovered we end up way way downstream looking down and across the water to where we (not she) grew up.

We aren't allowed access to the other side anymore. The power camp is gone, but if you squint just right you can see the water fountain and the apple orchard and the birch tree we used as second base. The first canyon where we ice-skated on the ponds, and the second hill where we flew kites.

People from town drive out to this point, sit in their cars and take in the sight. Unless they get out of their cars and step across the barrier fencing they miss what the river is about. One hundred yards beyond the no-trespass sign is when you start to feel the power of water falling.

vipassana

Vipassana is the Pali word for insight. I learned this while searching for a concrete understanding of the non-concrete world of intuition, which according to *cough* Wikipedia is:

" . . . regarded as a conscious commonality between earthly knowledge and the higher spiritual knowledge and appears as flashes of illumination. It is asserted that by definition intuition cannot be judged by logical reasoning."

When I write poetry, I tap into the realm of intuition which oft-times disconnects me from the tangible world. How much can this be trusted I wondered while thumbing through the sheets of internet knowledge.

These are the words that kept popping up: instinct, inherent, inclination, innate, insight, individual, immune, inner-motive, introspection, imagination and inspiration. 

Yes, *I* times twelve!

Did we know that intuition is the third of three stages of higher knowledge? First comes imagination and inspiration. Not that we needed it, but this enhances our license to create. I feel better -- now I understand better what  simmers beneath the surface. (And when I say understood, I mean to say I inuit.)

In my search to understand, I came across a quote from a favorite author, Pam Houston. Her pup, Dante, explained everything my own pup has always known even from our first meeting in the shade of Corey's cornfield outside her puppy kennel next to an unnamed irrigating canal. Calgirl took one look at my kids and me and knew what Dante also knew about we humans. It's taken me until now to learn how to listen to the pup channel:

"There are three principles to remember if you are to teach a human being anything, and they are consistency, consistency, consistency.They are such fragile creatures to begin with, with poor eyes, poorer hearing, and no sense of smell left to speak of, it's no wonder they are made of fear. Some centuries ago they moved inside and with that move went nine-tenths of their intuition. It is almost unmerciful to make them live so long when they spend their lives in so much pain."

after she drove off to seattle, before he came back from the caves

Sometimes the world comes

to our doorstep. Sometimes

it goes away.  We aren't big

on saying good-bye,

but we love

how you always

come home.

curve

When we choose a path with more unpredictable moments, we may take on more risks. There are more instances when we must think on our feet when the feet are tired and want only to find the recliner in a comfy living room. When we fall, knowing we won't land on said feet, it's good to remember Navy Seals training: to roll upon impact. Feel the curve, be the curl. Anticipate the motion.

Why did you choose the path with more risks? Or maybe you are waiting. Or maybe you said no?

It isn't that I want surprises in my life (surprises = unpredictable moments), but more that I value the curiosity that results. Two ounces of curiosity a week is equal to half a trip to the moon. I am sure I read that somewhere once. The grey matter tingles. Something inside vibrates. Imagination fires its after-burners.

From here, I am not sure what begats what but we no longer see just a red dot. We see without end. 

We are back to being able see the white sheet with its red dot hanging in the professor's classroom while he asks us what we see. We see the classroom inside the building on the campus in the city on the edge of a sea that is reached via a byway that tunnels beneath the ships bearing goods from Britain and Denmark. Perhaps there are pallets of library books and barrels of sawdust on board. This we do not know. What do we need to know for sure? Lately, that has been my question.

mittens hanging from a limb

Sometimes I talk too much about the same thing too often. I think this photo comes from an episode one autumn day when those around me had tired of the same walk.

(And here, when I say walk, remember that talk is interchangeable.)

There was nothing new to do. There were no bends in the road we hadn't taken, no undiscovered beaver dams and weeping cliffs. And Sherry had nothing new to say, which is not such a bad thing. But

when she says the same thing again and again, then it's time to change the outcome.

When we take to the road, there are some of us who say: Where are we going and what will we do when we get there?

I say: We might not get there at all.

They say: Then why the road trip?

And I say (and very likely you will say it with me):  Because it's not about the destination.

Sometimes it might come out accidentally as:  Because it's not about the $*%! destination. When one gets caught up in a cliched moment, one isn't sure what modifiers she used.

I take a camera with me to take photos of small details and unexpected metaphors. To liven things up, I might have once mentioned to my road-companions that one never knew when a corner might be turned and there could be a sighting of a rare red mitten moment.

No names named here, but one of the someones once wore a yellow coat and once wearied of turning a corner only to find red mittens on a chopping block

or sunning themselves in a cherry orchard

or fishing for crab on the Oregon Coast. Yellow-Coat-Sleeve threatened to toss the mitten into the Pacific unless there were some changes made. No more talk about journeys. No more metaphoric mittens

or one day I might find them hanging by their thumbs on the limbs of a cougar's tree.

montana girl speaks of water

photo by Nadine Hergenrider

The Montana Girl Speaks of Water
                        after Langston Hughes

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Eddies and bays abound

in my retreat to the mists
of the Missouri River falls, climbing

rock cliffs, toeing dirt, sliding
down the banks of graveyards

to a wide lazy
shoreline, retracing steps

once laid down with such skip,
such snap little girls had back then, still

wading in shallow water
with rolled cuffs and muddy elbows,

dreaming all the world was one
cool, shin-high ripple.

                 **

This poem was originally published in Babel Fruit. Click Here.

when i say rock i mean burden

Of the five books I am reading (at any one time), the book, Bread Givers, by Anzia Yezierska came to me by way of the paperbackswap.com website. Do you know it? You post ten books you don't want anymore. Whenever anyone orders the book from you, you agree to send it to them for free. In return, this allows you to order a book from another member for free. Some of the best obscure books on my shelves come from here.

       Best=books no one else wanted.

Like other websites, this one wants to predict what I would also like. Chances are if I ordered a book about *bread* I might also like a book about jam and eggplant. Or a book about crust and pie dough? MarketingUSA is certain there is a formula that will explain myself to me. The cynic in me scoffs at this. I've yet to figure out myself and so I wonder why Amazon and Ebay are certain they can predict my taste or my next purchase.

Still and all. Some things in life are common to us all. I could start a list of our common denominators and by item five your eyes would glaze over and you'd toggle off to another blog. Or, I predict, you might stand up and walk into your kitchen and fix yourself a ham sandwich and a plate of sliced eggplant. But wait. Just as you poke your head into the frig, wondering if you are out of mustard, you remember that I've not explained the photo in this blog.  So you close the frig and come back to read the rest of this post.

This is a used book. Someone else was here before I was. Between page one and page thirty-seven, these words are underlined:  pious, lame, sinful, boarders, dowry, beggar. Someone was reading a book about something foreign to her. When I reached page thirty-five, I learned that the person before me did not know what burden meant.

When I reached that part in the book last night, I stopped reading and have been thinking about burden ever since. When was it, in my life, that I didn't understand the term? I know I lived a stretch of time where the notion of bearing a burden would have been foreign to me, but I don't remember that stretch in time anymore. 

What and whom defines burden? Is it all about attitude? How many rocks (and when I say rocks I mean burdens) piled upon more rocks become too many?

When I read and when I connect with others, I realize that part of what I enjoy is learning how others pile their rocks. What adds to the pile and what lessens the weight of all those rocks? It's not something I dwell on, but since the person before me didn't know what burden meant, I realize I do know what it means. I know what it feels like and I know you do, too. But the negative vibes that result when we say burden are what I balk at. It seems to me that when said burden (and when I say burden I mean rock) comes into our life, a great way to deal with it is to make art. Build the pile, spread it out on canvas, layer it inside a poem, paste it inside a blog. Stand back and take its photo.

lifting- the art and price of said lifting

When a someone heard we were going on a road trip to somewhere, we were asked if we could haul a box of magazines to a someone else. This someone else is a relative which means I have designated lifting rights. (DLR) Say for instance I happen to notice a 1908 pamphlet on top of the magazines. And say I was in need of good advice for a week or two -- I could enact my DLR, keep the 1908 pamphlet for a bit and all the relatives would, should they hear of this lifting, these relatives would nod their head in that of-course-of-course affirmation. 

A stout man with a heavy hammer can in a short space of time shatter some boulders.

The use of ardent spirits as a beverage in the hayfield has gone out of fashion

to the benefit of all concerned.

The pamphlet is one hundred and two years old. Some of the words are not so easy to read. Some sentences are blurred. When we lift something, we learn about as-is stipulations and consequences. I remembered this only after reading page 55 a few times:

To fill the cracks in walls, etc., use vinegar instead of water . . .

When the pretty bunches of sweet-scented grass begin to lose their fragrance, plunge them into boiling water. . .

Do not make the mistake of crowding the house . . .have a pair of men . . .soap well . . .

Those who take me improve . . .

Never keep a person that has fainted . . .

Some days I could live with Tuesday's medium tides. Other days I admit to wanting some of the big ones -- the tides that race beneath my skin.

Some days I don't want sound advice. I know it is wise to pick off the loose stones from the mowing fields before the grass gets started, but there is a part of me which enjoys remembering that a stout man might come along and shatter any bothersome stones.

I could be the sort with rocks in her back yard.

I was starting to forget the point to this post. My apologies.

The point: when we enact our DLR, we get what we get. Next road trip I will return No. 116 to a someone who has yet to realize I lifted from last week's delivery. Which is more than okay in our family. What I hope though is he has issue No. 117.

Issue No. 116 has this riddle on page 52:

Those who take me improve, be their task what it may,

Those who have me are sorrowful through the long day,

I am hated alike by the foolish and wise,

Yet without me none ever to eminence rise.

I found the answers to the puzzles and riddles on page 51. But if you are already familiar with The Farmers Almanac, then you already know what I didn't: the 1908 edition has the answers to the 1907 edition.  

WGWWG.

We get what we get when we activate our DLR. This is one of those times when I admit to belatedly remembering this. Unless a someone has an answer to this riddle or Issue No. 117, I'm undermined and buried,  out of reach of the plough.

872 days

Some time ago we talked of Russia. She said St. Petersburg. I said Petrograd.

She said Leningrad and I said The Bronze Horseman.

We both thought of the siege.

Over a million people died.

She flew back to the other side of our country and read Paullina Simons' book.

She wrote to say she agreed with me: Best historical novel ever.

She said she was going there. I said ohmeingottthatwouldbesweet.

There might have been talk of watchingoutforcutesoldiers.

She's flying back here later this summer. I'll see if I can talk her into some photos.

She'll say Gospodi! Topor u moye golovye!

And I'll nod my head: Yes.

clearing the code

In the automotive repair industry, techs are accustomed to working on cars with check engine lights on. First time my check engine light came on, I suffered a silent panic. Surely the engine was about to blow. At the garage, I admired the tech's calm sureness. Nothing was really wrong with Derby (aka Jack) afterall. The tech told me all he had to do was clear the code. The error code.

Whatever was wrong is over.

Ever since, I've been thinking about applying this to my life and my relationships. I want that sensation of "whatever was wrong is over". I want to clear the code.

Surely we can each nod our heads and silently recall some issues in our lives where this would apply. I won't go into detail. Keeping everything in our lives balanced and humming is tricky. Sometimes a person -- let's say that person is me -- suffers from pitch drift (and thank you, Mike, for causing this term to come into my life). It's not easy to get tuned and then maintain that balanced pitch. Life happens. I read, I write, I sleep. I take road trips instead of calling friends. I glance at my life in the sideview mirror and realize my pitch has somehow drifted. 

After a bit, I get back to the business of tuning my strings again (and here, I suggest you consider me as a stringed instrument. Let's say I am a viola.) Trouble happens when I  get tuned too narrow (and now I thank someone else for pointing out this phrase which I admit to openly lifting.) If I tune too wide, I end up with the messy math in music.

Having the ability to clear the code is my idea of a solution. I didn't have a photo on my hard drive to use for this post. I was curious about what might happen if I googled for images of "clearing the code".

What happens inside you when you consider the word clearing? This is what happened to Google. And what follows the etching is a draft of a poem I wrote when someone asked me this same question a few months ago.

1864

There will be a clearing

which you won't notice first.

Softer and deeper needles cover your trail.
Filtered in contrary light, ferns
in pine shadows grow only on this side
of the divide. Did you know
when you crossed over? Clearings

bespeak of cabins; you walk a wider circle
finding what you hadn't known
was lost. Later, when you turn to leave
the sounds of your self will stay.
There, in a timber stand, ax in hand
you'll exhale with each side stroke. Felling.
Fallen. Befellen. Across the way

she comes to you, a jar of cooled tea clinks
when she sets her bucket down.
You let the sun crest and slide, share
the gingered water, drowsing in that summer's
heat. When you wake the shadows
will have shifted. The ax, the stripped
lodgepoles, sap from a ponderosa,
the bonnet and the ferns. Gone,
but for the feel of sun
having twice touched your skin.

putting ten years into trees

Charlie is a dutch shepherd rescued at seven months by my son. He likes to call her Charles. He understands her and knew the moment he saw her worried face in the Rescue Pen that she needed to come home with him. He has the strongest quiet vibe.

In working out her anxieties from five previous owners, Charlie ate some things of mine. A half-read book. A banister, the rungs from two stools. The siding from my shed. In horse world, this is called cribbing. She's much much better now that she trusts our household. Except for the trees in my backyard, I've not mourned any of these losses.

Spring came. I watched my neighbors' trees bud and leaf. My trees are, apparently, dead. At first I drove about the county looking for other trees who were late bloomers like mine. But now, I own the latest bloomers in the county and its time to realize my trees are dead. Time to borrow the chain saw from my ex and cut the lindens down.

I don't have ten years to put into trees anymore.

This was my whine to a friend not too long ago. I feel some sort of clock ticking in me and some sort of drain draining. I don't want to think of how old I'll be should I replace these lindens with fast-growing cottonwoods with Charlie-proof bark. Ten years from now, any new trees I plant now will just be getting to the size of the ones we will be cutting down next week. (Or the week after). 

(I procrastinate my pain.)

Measuring time like this makes me feel one touch old and one bit defeated. This was on my mind when I was sitting in my mother's kitchen, probably eating chocolate cream pie with my daughter to help myself (and my mom) feel better. The phone rang.  My mom smiled and whispered to us, "Listen to this. It's Daisy."

We listened.

"Hi Daisy! How are you?" Mom turned and nodded at us. We put our spoons down and scooted closer to the phone.

"No, no. This is Mrs. O'Keefe. William's wife. Is your granddaughter with you today?" Now, my mother had that worried frown.

Turned out Daisy was alone and her dryer wasn't working. Mom offered to go over and help her get it running. Turned out Daisy wasn't sure who she was talking to. "No Daisy, this is not Mrs. Santiago. This is Mrs. O'Keefe. Did your grandson get home from Washington yet?"

 The pie was getting warm and the conversation showed no signs of closure so we returned to the business of eating pie (quietly) and I data-sorted through my mind trying to figure out who Daisy was. Not that I know every friend of my mother, but it sounded to me as though Daisy was a good friend so I should have been able to place her. The call ended and I still had no idea who Daisy was.

Daisy, turns out, is a chronic wrong number.

Some time ago, Mom forgets when, Daisy accidentally dialed my mom's house phone. One thing led to another and my mom learned that Daisy was 95 and blind. Her grandkids live with her and Daisy takes amazingly good care of herself except for when her dryer is broke and then she wouldn't mind someone coming over and lending a hand. Other than that, Daisy is fine. She mixes up Mrs. Santiago with Mrs. O'Keefe, but something tells me that Mrs. Santiago is just as warm and caring.

Daisy is closer to being twice my age and has plans to purchase a new dryer. I thought about this while I finished the chocolate cream pie. Drank a glass of ice water (in my mind, the clear water negates the badness of chocolate dessert) and asked Mom if next time Daisy accidentally dials her instead of Mrs. Santiago if she'd ask Daisy how she feels about planting trees in her back yard.

I bet she does -- plant trees. And I bet she has done so -- started out all over again, more than once. Mostly though, I like thinking that she'd plant them, if need be, next year at this time. Right when summer flips away from spring.

this little guy

I caught his eye.

He caught mine.

Seventy-five cents a bundle. Two bundles for a dollar.

The little guy knew his prices. His colony grew these, fresh just this morning.

Freckles, even.

Fresh this morning, also. Just for you, lady.

Ours is the best. Picked fresh. Just this morning.

This caught my eye, too. My ear as well.

 . . . . . . . . . .I'm here to sell flowers, I'm not supposed to watch.

Lady, do you want one more picture?