The Serendipitous

All the backyard critters are in hiding, as I am.  There are workers tearing up the yard next door with their loud machinery, taking out the bad plumbing and putting in the new.  That perfectly landscaped yard next door has been completely un-landscaped.  And the neighbors, renters like most of us in this Googletown, must have been so disheartened by the disruption that they have left their upholstered living room-like lawn furniture out in the mounding dust and dirt, uncovered and unprotected. I bet they throw it away.


Last night when the team of plumbers finally stopped their noisy man talk and loud work for the day, the animals crept back in - the doves asking for millet, and all the other feathered and furred critters, waiting, while I replenished the sunflower seeds and peanuts.


Ahhh, the juxtaposition of the temporary, the human made, like the plumbing and the landscaping and the yard furniture, to that of Mother Nature, who is constantly reclaiming her place, wherever she can, whenever she can.


Our yard "proper" had nothing in it when we moved in.  The rooftop of the tiny 1926 bungalow was canopied by the precariously heavy branches of two enormous oaks. The backyard was bordered by a variety of singular trees: one struggling eucalyptus, an overgrown avocado, the ancient and dying olive, and a lone long-needled pine. The yard itself was nothing but packed hard dirt with no topsoil.  I have steadily worked the soil. I planted grass in the front yard for the sole purpose of giving the soil something to hold onto. I planted an herb garden and some succulents around the patio in the backyard. Then I watched, and I waited, to see what else in this old downtown yard would come back. The plant life did come back - wisteria, jasmine, ivy, wild grape, morning glories, passion flower vines ... the geraniums, the blackberries, the bird of paradise, three rose bushes, a wispy fern, four different ground covers, several native wildflowers.  And, so came, the Naked Ladies.


Naked Ladies are beautiful-tall-lustrous-rose-pink lilies on  leafless-long-bare stalks that have their day in the sun for a short season in early August. Unlike the gorgeous blue scrub jay, I didn't have to lure it to the yard.  An older neighbor had told me not to plant anything along that side of the front yard, that there were special flowers there. She dug into the earth to show me their bulbs.  It took three years of waiting to see them bloom, all along the fence row. 


It brings me joy, this serendipitous piece of earth that I wait on and tend.
As I grow older, I tend to and wait on my own body, mind, and soul - looking towards a time when it will come into its own season of full serendipity. 

early morning 2/21

Where are you going Hugh Little?
    shoving off from this coastline into fathomless seas
When will we lose you beyond this horizon?
How will we safe passage to yon distant shore?

So long dear Hugh Little,
    our strong and sure captain through to the end.
Now our turn to helm this vessel
    gathering loved ones safely in.

two kinds of alone

for a married woman, I think, there are two kinds of alone

that alone when he has left for his day and you are done taking care of his needs -
the working around him so as to not get in the way
then finally - you regard your own day, your own needs

and that other alone of the no one there to share the glass of wine and broken bread
no one to warm the side of the bed you snuggle into when he gets up before you
now, it's an aching hole of absence in the empty spaces of routine

that alone when you finish your part in the hub of the working day and are home alone -
having an hour or so, alone, before he comes home, hungry, world weary -
home alone in that room of one's own
to fix yourself a spot of tea and feed the birds, the greedy squirrels, the mean jays

and that other alone when the sky is never blue, really, a blue you can trust
or the rain all feels like the acid kind, biting cold
and you wander, and you wonder why you were always needing so much to be alone

there are two kinds of alone that I have seen,
I had a vivid dream that I was left with the final kind
so I try not to need the other one too much