Before It Slips Away

Cardoon, 2013

The Anniversary of Our Engagement

A sleeping coyote
Seal pups
Unbroken sand dollars
Bill Evans
Brickmaiden
Laura Chenel's Mélodie
The knit stitch
Lavender baths
Watching little birds sing with their entire bodies
The meadow, oh the meadow...
Grilled corn on the cob
Kelly's pattypan squash
Cows, horses, and little lambs with long black gloves
Feeling undaunted by Wild Flour's closed sign
A summer matinee in a near-empty movie theater
Early Gravenstein apples
Eating $1 oysters beside the bay in which they grew
Crazy delicious smoked salmon
Smelling lilacs behind the farmhouse
Tiny fish darting around in a stream
Mint chocolate chip ice cream, and a broken cone
Christopher's cardoon flower from Table Top Farm
Rye porridge with Toma and thyme
Pork belly with sweet and sour fennel and plum
Vanilla soft serve with olive oil and salt
Walking and talking, morning and night
Quiet time in the library
Finding a used book of poems in one of my favorite bookstores
Breakfast in the backyard
Spunky kittens climbing trees
Picking and eating ripe, warm-from-the-sun blackberries
Chickens pecking at corncobs
Peter Martinelli's strawberries
Perry's paella to-go
Sitting beneath a blanket, at the beach, on a cool gray day
Sweet pale orange cherry tomatoes
Slim green beans, perfectly cooked
Tiny misshapen new potatoes
Reading in the middle of the day
Sleepy afternoons, and naps
White-tailed Kites at the wetlands
Apricot and coconut cookies dipped in whole milk
Fog on the ridge

More

I want you to look in the mirror, slowly trace the tiny lines around your eyes, and love yourself more.

I Prefer

Flowers for Jane, 2013

To race breathlessly along pages, line by line
without pause.

To gasp for air at the end.

Or to slowly devour words, licking
each one from the page.
Indulgently.

The inhaling with rapid speed.
The necessity of knowing it all. Now.
I've done it.

But I prefer the licking.

To Unplug

Quiet, 2013

To unplug. For me, it is a critical part of feeling balanced, stable, grounded. I often find what I need in this screen, but there are things I cannot find here. A single day away offers much. An extended period reminds me there are other ways to live. I'm about to feel that shift, that restless period in the space between things, and the quiet comfort that follows.

Do you ever unplug, or think about doing so?

It was about 4:00 p.m.

I approached a tattered church. The doors and windows were boarded up, discarded clothing and trash were strewn about. One sad tree stood in front. And the air smelled like strawberries. How? I stopped. There was a low breeze. Unopened mail skittered across the dirty sidewalk, past my feet. It was unmistakable. Strawberries.

1961 vs. 2013

Yellow, 2013

"If you are wakeful some night, and don't want to take a sleeping pill but don't want to just lie there, either, try to figure this out: why do women spend time and money on their hair, face, and hands, presumably to make themselves attractive, then, as style dictates, wear unbecoming, even outlandish clothes? And when you have that settled, work on this one: why does it occur to so few women that a mode of living which doesn't push her around will reflect itself in her face and manner, and do more for her appearance than make-up and hairdo?

By the time you have those two questions solved it will be time to get up and get breakfast, then wash and iron the living room curtains."

-Ruth Stout (1961)

But we (women) are different now, right?