Theresa of Avila in the Garden

The strawberry fills my mouth, a rude kiss, a soft bruise against the back of my teeth. Red and ripe, voluptuous and sweet. Juice bleeds down the sides of my mouth. It's permissible to slowly lick one's stained fingers, one at a time, eyes closed in prolonged ecstasy. Theresa of Avila in the Garden. I hesitate. The next berry might disappoint, lack the perfection of the first berry: warm and ripe and willing. Hands on my hips, I contemplate my garden, disapproving of its unwillingness to yield. Ogallala Everbearing, guaranteed to bear and yet they stubbornly refuse to send out runners. They tease me with deep green leaves, hopeful white blossoms, yellow-eyed. They hide beneath the wild lupine that cruelly invade my bed. They lure yarrow into their domain, and the yarrow, too, conspires to deny me berries. Too long I have accepted their wild undisciplined ways. No more. I uproot the bed, lupine and berries and yarrow all together. Glean the berries and start over: add compost and ashes. The detritus of life dug into the soil, unwelcome wild yarrow and lupine exiled, unruly scrub oak expelled. The bed now fallow until next Spring, until the Gurney Seed Catalog arrives and the ever-bearing strawberries, glossy and perfect and unattainable, sing their sweet siren song, and I again succumb.

the Zen of Arrival

...was our first assignment: The Road to Crestone, County T, passed the info booth, which of course I breezed by, hoping to see a UFO welcome wagon. The road to enlightenment degraded, literally, from asphalt to gravel, dusty hardpan washboard. By then I'd turned off the Andrea Bocelli and determined to bask in silence. After a mile or so, I began hoping the sacred road grader would make an appearance. The road narrowed; I was sure it was a metaphor.

But of course, we do - come home, the last post

a chimera of sorts, nothing to do with the Thomas Wolfe sort of moment, we all go home again, and again. But it's a going, not a coming...that may be way too esoteric or just plain thick, but I actually know what I mean (going home v coming home). I had my son home for a night. We made peach jam and spaghetti sauce (which got rather lively in the pressure cooker). I awoke this morning with an ineffable sense of loss, a hollowness that I always get when one of them leaves, or I leave them.

I. The Attic Speaks
this is a sort of meditation on the stuff that grows in my attic, coming and going with the to and fro of my various spawn - god that sounds awful. Anyway:

I am sometimes cautioned: "I may have to take that back with me.
I may need it this winter [spring, summer, fall]."

More often: "Can you put this in the attic for me? I can't take it with me, don't have the room..."

And so their possessions come and go and leave indelible tracks on my heart,
reminding me that they are not here, and that even their vestiges are temporary.

I may change that phrase to "...cast shadows on my heart..." rather than leave , etc.

Whaddya think?

II. Untitled

There lies your suitcase
on the bed in your old room.
So temporary.

There lies your suitcase
on the bed in the blue room.
So temporary.

Basta - I have chicken in the oven and it smells wonderful.

Sometimes you can't come home

Not a concept I've ever embraced, but listening to "The Jefferson Hour" this week, Clyde Jenkins was discussing Merriweather Lewis' failure to adjust after the long trek through the Louisiana Territory and said (paraphrasing someone else I failed to note): "How far can you go out before you can't come back?" I think about Terre that way, that he just got lost and couldn't get back. Or became someone else, really.