Toilantrouble

My hands and arms are starting to look like a farmer's limbs, all tanned, calloused, nicked and scraped. I have always worked in my garden, but this week I engaged in true manual labor for the first time in many decades. My friend Virginia and I decided to rip out our front lawns in preparation for the planting of drought-tolerant perennials. We rented a sod cutter and then spent the entire day on Wednesday wrestling the infernal machine through our respective sods. This is not the sort of machine that makes a job easier, we found. Rather, it it the sort of machine that introduces new possibilities for excruciatingly hard work. Without such a device, the idea of tearing out a well entrenched lawn, even a moderately sized one such as formerly existed in front of my house or Virginia's, would never have come up. Without such a device, the project would have been impossible. With it, it was merely difficult. Difficult enough to merit a series of gin and tonics upon its completion.

On Thursday, my son and I took spade and shovel and removed the bits of sod that were inaccessible to the sod cutter due to tree roots and sprinkler heads. On Friday I ordered three cubic yards of redwood bark and when it was delivered Sunday morning I raked and shoveled it around where the grass used to be. So now my front yard is covered and fragrant, and somewhere lies a grove of naked redwood trees.

Stream at Twin Lakes

I dipped my hand into a mountain stream
that brimmed with icy broth from melting snow,
water trapped for months in frozen froth
made molten by the heat that radiates
from places where the water goes to pool
and wait for the miracle of tiny seed

Younger, wilder than the poetry
of light and ice and swift colliding wind,

the oozing rivulets of life compose
in rime and form that holds its shape but long
enough to feel the current's stony force
and know it stops for nothing, not for death.
We lack the austere power of simple chemistry
but have the chance to glimpse the arc of mystery

My sister has just returned home from a week by our ancestral ocean. The warm summer waters along the Outer Banks of North Carolina were our family's favorite vacation venue and my two Eastern siblings have kept up the tradition of going there regularly to body surf and eat fried fish and steamed crabs. I had thought of going to join my younger sister's family but because I thought of it rather late the airfares were high and decided against it. I do not know if I would have regretted the impracticality of going more than I regret the practicality of not going.

Waves in the West are cold and creative, like icy surgical knives on the jut-jawed continental face. The waves I remember from my youthful summers were like a therapist's hands, firm but gentle and oil-warm.

And I am in great need of a salty tumble in that therapist's oyster-scented hands.