Category Archives: Nature

The Lone Egret (34)

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My shoulders jump, and I bring my bike to a stop. I’d surprised an egret when I came around the bend on the path, his big wings ready to launch himself at the whoosh of my sudden presence. His flurry of flapping startled me in return. Now he is standing off a bit on the golf course looking back at me. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “You scared me, too.” I laugh. “I had no idea you were there.” He stretches his neck, listening, watching me. “I’m coming back in a few minutes,” I warn him. “I’ll be more careful,” I say, and I push myself off again. I have decided to be “smart” on a busy day, taking my bike on the path instead of walking so I can go to Ralph’s on the way home, buy bird seed and cat litter. But maybe in my rush of doing I wasn’t paying enough attention. It feels good to be out, my wild wispy orange scarf keeping my neck warm as I ride. I pass a man with a grumpy face walking his dog. When I turn around and ride past him again I smile, and he almost smiles back. I slow down when I get back to Egret Bend, and I am surprised and glad to see him standing there, his tall, slim form still brilliant in the late dusk. I stop again, and we watch each other a bit more. I don’t know what I say, small endearments, high praise. He stretches his neck and moves his head as though he is following the arc of my words. “Safe night,” I wish him as I begin to ride away. “Sweet dreams.” I look for him and see him again each evening for a week, his stark, graceful form pure white and meandering in the distance. He is always alone.

Who Are Your Angels? (31)

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Without thinking, take a leap. Who are your angels? Name them all. Go.

My angels? Without thinking??!!? Oma, maybe. Lassie. Sanji. Bonnie. Daddy. Even Jarv? But oh goodness–how do I do it without thinking? Angels are not supposed to be spirits of loved ones who’ve died but their own “species,” so to speak. I have a hunch it is because of angels I no longer feel alone the way I used to, though maybe growing up has a part in that, too. I imagine angels disguised as birds in my life–the beat of the raven’s wings near my head, the kestrel’s call, that silvered moment when I watched the barn owl’s silent glide in the night, lit by the lights shooting up from the ground at the house on the corner. I imagine a fat angel in a white dress perched on the wooden fence between my home and my landlord’s. She has yellow hair, like the felt angel Mami gave me years ago with the wild yellow curls who hangs on my front gate at Christmas.

[Editor’s note: This is another writing prompt from before I moved into my trailer. Things, as you can see, will be a bit of a hodgepodge while I work toward still meeting my original commitment of 55 posts while I’m 55 in spite of my huge lapse this year. ;-)

I am thinking of working with prompts for going forward, too. I think this is the last of the older ones. I thought some of you might enjoy having the prompts themselves, though I’m afraid I don’t have attributions for these last few.]

Bittersweet (30)

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Melancholy
bends and twists
and bows
lilac after an early summer rain.
Touch it
smooth and hard
like sea glass.
Melancholy
a deep blue green
water
in Greece.
Melancholy
tastes like tree bark
like tea brewed from bitter roots
without enough honey
like artichokes.
It rings like chimes
in a light breeze
at dusk.

Another Summer’s Dream (29)

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I dream I am dreaming. I know when I wake up in the dream whatever is there–whatever I see first–will be what’s important. I open my eyes and the first thing I see are the stars, a whole deep sky of them, the kind you don’t see in the city. And below is a wooden roof that is my mother’s roof in the dream, and there is some sort of art sitting on it like a fancy painted nesting box made of wood. I don’t understand it, but it makes me feel good looking at it in the quiet night.

I Want To Write About . . . (28)

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Begin with the phrase, “I want to write about. . . .” Go.

I want to write about frogs and waffles, the way frogs come overnight in the ditches beside country highways after a summer rain, and you can hear them, thousands of frog voices all at once, when you drive along with the windows rolled down, and waffles crisp on the outside, pockets filled with melted butter, and you pour real maple syrup over it all and eat fast so they don’t get soggy. I want to write about trampolines. I remember how Del’s family had one flush with the ground in their front yard in La Crescenta. I loved that, not having that extra height of it being off the ground. I want to try one again after I’ve done more yoga and become less and less tight, less constricted in my movements. And oh! The trapeze! I’d forgotten about the low-flying trapeze and how somehow I was light enough and strong enough to move from one to the other in a large circle around Terri’s Berkeley studio all those years ago, like flying, like music, like being in synch, “aligned with something larger” as my blog reader wrote. I want to be that person again who can move around the room on the trapeze. I want to write about fossils. Fossils?!!? I would still like to go on a dig someday. And there is something to be said for holding a piece of life in your hands, rubbing your fingers against its roughness, along its ridges. I want to write about rain spouts in Ajijic.

Time’s up.

Where I Live (24)

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mountains, clouds, sky

I ride along the bike path on my way home from the farmers market, the San Jacinto mountains ranged before me. “Look where I live,” I whisper. I remember driving home from Santa Rosa on Guerneville Road, fields spread out beside me, the green rolling hills ahead. “Look where I live,” I’d say. I’d wiggle my butt on the seat, both hands on the wheel, dancing a little jig inside. I can go all the way back to Oakland, to that freeway junction I loved, from 580 to 24, I think. It ran in a wide climbing arc, the glory of the East Bay spread out below me. In Hopland I would sit on our wide stone porch and watch the rock outcropping change colors with the day, and I’d feel like I was living in a vacation rental. Then walking on the beach in Todos Santos, alone amidst scoops of brown pelicans, no one else in sight. Or riding the bus to San Juan Cosolá, ranchera music pouring out the open windows, my cheeks wet with grateful tears. I have been so lucky. But there is something about the San Jacintos that stirs me. And they are such a contrast to the lush farmland and oak woodland green of Sonoma County that evoked that first deep sense of wonder over where I lived. Now it is this stark, enormous nearby presence that makes my heart beat, breathes my lungs, these craggy rock mountains so alive I wonder if I can ever choose to live without them.

First Bloom (22)

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tip of palo verde with yellow blossoms dangling

I glance up and see a new yellow blossom on our palo verde, Serena. It reminds me of April 29th, the first full day in our new home. I was sitting outside in the morning, and a little yellow bird came to perch in the tip of our tree. She was smaller then. I remember talking to the bird, thinking her visit was a good omen. Today I am surprised by this first bloom. But glad, too. It feels like she’s telling me she’s okay. I’ve worried about her all along, my first tree planted in the ground. Maybe this new burst of fragile yellow really is a message for me. Maybe she’s saying, “Don’t worry.” Maybe she’s saying, “I’m happy. You be happy, too.”