Author: LFSAlden

Remember whom I’m walking with,

Remember whom I’m walking with,

Remember whom I’m walking with,

Keep the name on my lips and tongue,

Remember the name,

Remember the name

Remember the path.

The body keeps the score…

and when I take one step forward and knock loose a bunch of old, stuck ligaments and muscles

I knock loose the wee monsters which stuck them in the first place.

Yep.

But it was only one step back. And a good night’s sleep made up the difference. Is this what they call resilience?

The bouncy ball has been placed in Time Out

under the picnic table, where I cannot reach it.

I just kept throwing it far away.

Apparently I am the reason we can’t have nice things.

#ThinkLikeAnAussie

Color grows in the milkweed,

I see more butterflies by day and fewer fireflies by night.

Brightwork.

She said “brightwork” and the words and works began to cascade, tumble, flow.

Ironwork, blackwork, firework (which is entirely different from fireworks, for discussion see my academic blog),

Stonework, headwork, wetwork,

Brightwork. Yes.

So many smells!

Dumped trash, coyote feet,

Squirrels and sharp squirrels and stink squirrels!

/*I beg your pardon. The dogs were typing. All wildlife is, apparently, a coyote or a squirrel. They were speaking of squirrels, porcupines, and skunks*/

Meadow grasses and milkweed blossoms!

The flowers are heavy compared to their stalks, a hundred blossomlets clustered together

And then daisies and black-eyed Susans next to one another, I think of them as Sorcha and Dorcia – bright and dark twins.

There’s something yellow and balloon-y in the meadow, too, low but bright against the green and there are red berries on shrubs without names and something viney climbs up something grain-y.

Over all, she reigns, Queen Anne clad in lace, bobbing tallest, nodding in the breeze to her sisters and to her subjects.

Have you ever tasted the root of this gracious, delicate flower? Have you looked beneath the perfectly formed discs of a myriad of florets, graced as often as not with a center drop of royal blood, below the intricately spun greens?

Have you found the taproot?

Tough as nails.

Stringy, strong,

and oh, so deep.

Have you tasted it?

She may be Queen, but her lovers call her Wild Carrot.

Real, real, real rain rocked me to sleep,

the sound, rush, gush, hushing over leaf and roof,

washing the air,

bringing in clean, clear dreams.

This was just right – a very early walk

even chilly enough for a snow-leopard cardigan

with humidity hanging cool between the bits of air.

I had dreamed of orange flowers, and I had wondered if they were day-lilies, and there they were, on our walk, un-self-conscious orange in a world of summer greens.

Now everything is back on track. The walks must be early, that is the magic.

I return from Right Walkies to receive Right Messages and Right Ideas in the Right Order. The spreadsheet of my mind is satisfied.

Very well, then.

The walks must be early. That is the magic.

Possibilities are coming apart,

and that’s okay, too.

We walked all the way round the cul-de-sac today,

The dogs, the characters in my head, and I.

They distracted me while I tried to count down from twenty four, a task which in the moment seemed terribly important. I needed to count down from twenty four while I was walking, you see, or else I would have had to do it after walking and that would not do.

So the characters distracted me while the dogs found mud.

There was something all tight and stuck in my hip, my walk was halting, not smooth, not dancing on a wave.

Not quite drowning in a wave either, more falling, more stumbling.

That’s all right.

Better to warm up the machine with a quiet walk with dogs and characters and numbers, slowly, on my own familiar territory

than to try to do it out there in the world where one must pay bills

or to not do it at all.

I made it to eighteen.