a mortar & pestle that grinds out
essential oils from each ingredient
instead of merely chopping up and mixing
food in a whir of blades and electricity
that holds flavor over time and lends
complexity to future pesto, future salsa
its generosity requires effort and care
my drop of sweat might have been the pinch of salt
it needed and the mortar & pestle will remember
(tick
Early morning walks through the garden,
a yard full of fireflies, flashing like lightning.
Cicadas, bullfrogs, chirping birds,
not sirens, semis and people yelling.
Evening chats with neighbors out on the patio
as storms roll in. I’ve traded my high heels
for muck boots. A much needed slower pace
brings rest to my soul. I don’t miss the city life.
my sister and i sat on the kitchen floor,
a stack of sleeveless 45s between us.
i placed the adapter on the turntable,
put a record on, set the needle down.
we sang along to the story
of a pony named Wildfire,
danced to a ditty about a
brand new roller skate key,
laughed through a song about Galileo,
sung by a guy named Freddie.
a box of cereal
on the floor–
milk, spoons,
two big bowls.
she liked it crunchy;
me, soggy.
mom, smoking cigarettes,
hovering over the stove–
pork chops, fried potatoes,
green beans cooked with bacon grease.
dad and our brothers,
off to see some space movie.
on the window sill,
a sparrow bounced,
sang a song of his
own.
Up the sun-bleached wooden ladder,
across the gritty sandbags and down
into the bunker’s hot metal-shade.
Before my eyes adjust I sense I’m not alone.
A greenish-grey monkey has just finished making
a political statement on my field radio.
He freezes me in place with a mirthless grin
before scrambling over the sandbags, the stench
of his urine now wafting up in the heat.
The perforated steel planks are half-buried
in the mud on the path leading to the mess-hall.
Apparently some idiot has left a cable lying where
anyone could just trip over it. But now it seems
the cable is moving by itself, and by the time my brain
gets a handle on this the cobra’s head is at least 3 feet
off the ground and she’s swaying back and forth,
checking me out, sizing me up. Time has stopped.
Deciding I’m not worth the trouble, she drops back
down and esses her way under the nearest hooch.
My lungs reinflate, my heart starts back up, and the
World’s Luckiest Mammal stumbles on down the trail.
Two hours until dawn and the end of my shift
and I’m doing calisthenics to keep from nodding off.
Another routine sweep with the starlight scope
and now I’m jolted wide-awake by something
large just emerging from the treeline. Out beyond
the barbed wire, in the night-scope’s ghostly green
walks something that is not supposed to be here.
A full-grown tiger is casually making his way
across the top of a rice-dike. There is no time to
wake up anyone else. In 30 more seconds he will
safely disappear back into the nippa palms. This gift
is for my eyes alone and will be burned there forever.
In the morning the women who work this paddy
will criss-cross that dike dozens of times, their tiny
footprints erasing all evidence that the great beast
was ever there.
There is something about being on top of a ridge
and seeing the whole world spread out.
We used to go ridge runnin’
as fast as our father’s pickups could handle the windy roads,
steep dropoffs to the right and tree trunks for guardrails.
Anxious for the dizzying pull of a curve,
seldom did we slow at the top to look around.
The forward motion intoxicated us,
that and our friends and the radio and beer.
Later in life
those of us left
walk up the ridges
that rise from our own backyards.
We pause for a breath
or to examine a tree’s bark,
our only companion a dog.
There is something about being at the top of a ridge
that allows looking forward
and backward
at once.
Trickle trickle.
You are whacthing
a time glass.
You sit there
waiting
turning it over and
over again,
when it runs out
of sand at the top.
You are hesitating
for time to stop.
