Coyote Moon

The moon had risen and night was late
When I found I could no longer wait
But setting my tread at a measured pace
And determining my steps could not be traced
I left the house by the garden gate

And following the stars in their ageless race
I watched the moon’s uncaring face
And flinched at sounds I could not see
Or thoughts that threatened restlessly
Pondering the bitterness of grace

Until I woke to the lingering wail
That coyotes weave when the moon is veiled
To find myself at the fire side
In the window seat where I’d come to hide
And think, before my dreams assailed.

Stop Frame

She was always in motion
Hands, feet, smile flashing suddenly
And unexpectedly.
When she dashed out on the sidewalk and
Collided with him on his bike, it was like
A meteor crashing into a
Dark lake
At midnight.
She shattered his calm
And set the world to dancing,
And when he stared up at her face,
Everything
Else disappeared in a
Haze of gold.
He never knew what hit him.

Day in the life

I'm working at the office today...as I did yesterday...as I did tomorrow. I'm even getting paid for it, which is extra pleasing to my soul. But right now there is a creepy person staring through the door of the first prep-and-care room, and I'm sitting directly in his line of sight and it's weirding me out. But, ya know, creepers gotta creep. I just smile back and think, I've got Mace in my purse with your name on it...

What was really, really extra super funny earlier today was when I was leading a new patient, a first timer, back to the second room to wait until dad finished with his patient, a gentleman with a propensity to be a drama queen of the first order. Supposedly, his toe was somewhat sore, and just as we passed the door, dad tweaked it.

The man wasn't really that loud, but he let out this wail, "Ooooooooooooo....", and fell back in his chair and--I kid you not--threw his hand up to his forehead, while dad briskly trims a callous with a bright, shiny scalpel.

Needless to say, that is not exactly the first thing you want to see when you walk into a new office for the first time. I glanced up at this big hulking guy beside me, and his eyes get really wide. He might even have gone a little pale around the edges. I tried to smile as reassuringly as I could, and I saw him gripping the armrests.

I left him in his room, walked outside, and laughed.

Freize

We sat on the grass & rested after an hour of hard work & watched the sun start to drop. There was a small humming that grew and grew exponentially & we looked up & suddenly we were in a cloud of golden honey bees. The humming sank into our skin & we stood up and lifted our arms & felt the barest brush of thousands of wings, & when they passed to new lands we waved goodbye.

She walked barefoot along the wet path & felt the rain begin to fall through the thick leaves, setting the ferns to nodding & painting circles on the surface of the creek. She was wet to the skin and it seemed natural to be soaked into the soil through the dead leaves underfoot, & when the rain suddenly grew voices & brought snatches of conversation from far away, riding on the water in the air, she stopped & turned up her face & laughed.

Exchange

Strain backwards, pull the weed free of the dirt. Straighten and wipe the sweat away, let it fall like rain on the earth that stretches far and farther to the forest. I smile, because no matter how strong those weeds are rooted in, they aren't half as strong as me. I'm in deep, here, sunk in this soil like the sugar maples we tap, and here my roots stay.

This land calls to me, pulls me in and wraps me close enough to hear the thrumming heartbeat. I never thought that the evening could be spicy, racy, feisty, but it is. No matter where I go, I'll always remember this smell and feel and slant of evening light.

Sometimes I think the dirt in these calluses, tracing my palm, has steeped into my blood. The next weed I pull has thorns, and I laugh. My land has a bite and I love it. If my blood has the same composition as the riverwater below, it's no problem to shed it here and loose it into the soil again.

It seems only a fair exchange, to me.

Shake a Fist

I can't do it, anymore. I can't look up at a black sky without feeling my stomach clench, like a fist has just been buried in it. I can't see lightning flash past the trees without dropping everything and making sure everyone is inside, and safe. When the storm is rolling through, I can't stay away from the window, always watching, watching for...what? I don't even like to say it. That's how bad it is. Ever since the storm in Tennessee.

Fear...makes me angry. Also, people who aren't aware of how easy it is to get hurt, to die. Who don't take precautions of any sort. I told them, Mother Nature is a b****. You do not mess with Mother Nature.

So I don't know what to do now. If you're afraid, you're supposed to face your fear and conquer it. But I don't know how to face this--because it's rooted in truth. And I'm not about to stand out in the field in a lightening storm singing, "I'm a little lightning rod for Jesus," like I used to as a kid. (A very little kid.)

Blehg. This is getting nowhere. Maybe I will go sing in the next storm.

Duckness

I'm realizing--again--that while I love being home, summers at home are lonely. At least I had something to study last year, but the MCAT has come and gone and I don't even have a job to keep me distracted. I'd be leaving too soon to have one/I'm gone most weekends/there's nowhere to work around here--but still. I'm basically useless and I hate it. (Oh, I took Mary Ellen back to Morgantown for a day. That was...enlightening. Apparently the older generation doesn't realize that racial slurs aren't appropriate anymore. I just about died.)

But, on the other hand...this is the Summer of the Ducks. There are eight of them, now, all growing fast and completely lovable. I realize that most people don't know what it feels like to have little bills nibbling your toes, or fingers, or shirt hems, and you guys are all missing out.

Home sweet chicken house-thing.

They got put out in the playhouse for the first time last night. They'll be warm, because I rigged a heat lamp, and they have our half-grown chickens for company (which is not appreciated by either party). I was outside, trying to convince them that they wanted to be outside too--but they took their own sweet time coming out. They do this little belly-surfing thing, when they're not sure they want to be somewhere other than where they are. They'll be laying there, nibbling, and then they just plow forward a little, one at a time, until they're all relocated. Cute but maddeningly slow.

The outside world is a very big place.

They're wonderfully distinct, if you know what to look for. Flash is lighter than the other ducks and has only one stripe down his face instead of two. Spikemo is skinny, and for the first week his head feathers were all matted together in a mini, icky mohawk. Brutae is the biggest and most agressive, while Weebler (he couldn't walk very well when he hatched) is the most affectionate, as well as the smallest.

Trying to convince them that they should use the ramp. They were not amused. I've had better (cleaner) ideas.

Dasta has a greyer chest and doesn't like being touched, unless it's on his terms. Shen is the most noncommittal, and his stripes are slanted so he looks Asian. Smudge is always anxious--she even wakes up from a sound sleep, tucked in the crook of my arm, to chirp and make sure I'm still around. And Taz has a really heavy stripe, like mascara that was smeared. Yes, I am serious. They are all that different. For some reason, people have a hard time believing.

When they decide it's time to sleep, there is no budging them.

I dragged a kiddie pool out to their pen today, and filled it up to the brim with water. They took a lot of coaxing, because this is the first time I've had them around so much water since they were born, but eventually they were all bouncing in and around.

All eight of the little dripping rascals.

It was so funny--the first one I threw in was Taz, and he just bobbed there, feet all splayed out, wondering what in the world was going on. And then, he just gave this odd chirp and took off, diving under the water and streaking around like a mad duck. I was laughing too hard to catch it on camera.

Weebler

Eventually I got tired of wading, and just scooped them and tossed them in. They loved it, I loved it...what a beautiful day.



Shen

If I can't have people around, well...ducklings are a pretty close second.

I tried sticking a vid on but it didn't work. Maybe tomorrow.

Cackle Quack

I'm sitting in a hotel in Morgantown. You don't know why. Yet.

It was a chain of events, really. One decision, leading to another, and another. Some choices aren't really choices--sure, you can say yes, or no, but you really...can't. I couldn't. So I'm sitting in a hotel at Morgantown.

My mom works at a Wound Care Center, and one of her patients is this 91 year old lady, whom I now call "Miss Mary." She's quite spunky, running all around and not letting anyone get the better of her. It turns out, though, that she needed a minor surgery that, despite being so minor, could not be done in Lewisburg. Due to its nature, she could also not drive after having this surgery.

From what I hear of her family, her daughter isn't the type to do much more than take mom's money. So she had no one to drive her, and was considering cancelling the surgery.

So she made the first choice in our line--she told my mom about her problems. Actually, now that I know her much, much better than I ever thought I would, she probably told everyone. So at this point our line of decisions isn't too specific.

For those of you who know my mom, you are already aware that she is the sweetest person ever. She tries to fix everyone's problems and make them happy, and usually she succeeds very well. So in her infinite kindness, she said--you know it--"My daughter is home for the summer, and she doesn't have anything to do." And miss Mary was so excited to hear that she didn't have to cancel her procedure

That was the second choice. It's funny how quickly your options start to narrow, and then disappear. In the course of their conversation following my mom's decision to mention my name, my options disappeared. There's only so far you can go before saying "No, I'd rather not" puts you in the same inescapable category as, say, Hitler. Or Satan.

So here I am. We're going home today. Maybe. We have an hour and a half left until we have to check out, and I am firm in my belief that it will take every single minute of that time for us to actually depart. We took 45 minutes to eat breakfast this morning. Bless her heart, and she keeps talking about stopping on the way home and eating again. Home, by the way, is 3 1/2 hours away.

Oh, and in case you think I'm an awful, impatient person, I had baby ducks hatching out when I left home. They are...well. I will definitely post again tonight with pictures. But the two that were out when I left would come running, when they saw me, and jump up in my lap, scrambling with their little webbed, clawed feet. They would curl up in the crook of my arm and nibble my wrist until they fell asleep, their heads turned so they could look up into my face. I fell in love, and right now I am jumping to get home. Because now there are eight wee duckies.

So that's why I'm sitting in a hotel in Morgantown. Still. There are forty minutes to checkout now. I'm actually not sure if we'll be home before five. Before we started on this adventure, I thought we'd be home at this point on Wednesday. The gods are laughing at me about now, howling and rolling around most likely.

Here goes. I'm going to try and get us home.

Summer Sunday

Do you know how to work?

I never really thought about it until recently, but there really are very few people of my age and whatnot that know how to put in a full day's labor. And I do mean labor. It's a very strange thought to me.

I was just sitting here, gulping down some ice water and putting yet more sunblock on my shoulders, and feeling guilty because it's 7 pm and I should still be outside working. Dad is mowing hay, a hot and weary job, and who knows where Alex and Allie are. Working somewhere, I know. I'm going to go find them.

But it suddenly occured to me to wonder, what are all of my friends doing today? If they're in summer classes, it's just another day of sitting somewhere and studying. If they aren't, well, what do regular people do on summer Sundays? I really don't know.

We work from the time we get up to the time dark falls, or thereabouts. Dropping, tetting, and baling hay always means sore backs and aching muscles, but it has to be done. There are gardens to plow, horses to train, plants to seed, raise, transplant, water, and weed. There is fence to build, which is what we were doing today, and a barn to finish building. Sheds to paint, ducks to raise (they hatch next week!), and wood to load. There was also a tractor to tame and a skid-steer to learn to use. I mowed our estwhile yard with the tractor at first, trying to wrest it back from the woods that had claimed it for so long, and then today I smoothed it with the zero-turn mower. The rocks almost won. There are also people to feed, three times a day, groceries to get, laundry to do, and a house to keep clean when the sweaty people come in every night and fall into bed exhausted. Tomorrow, being a holiday, will be more of the same.

And that's not the half of it. My point is, does anybody else work? What do people do during a summer weekend at home? Does it look anything like mine? Does anybody want to come and help me? Haha...

Herbs Galore

AMAZING.

There's probably a bit of blasphemy in this statement somewhere--but truly, I believe that if there's any real magic in the world, it's in the kitchen. Pure witchcraft. Oxymoron, maybe, but true nontheless.

We built some raised beds tonight, for the plethora of herbs that I picked out yesterday. My aunt Carol runs a greenhouse, and she always plants more than she can use or sell. It's a good thing. Yesterday, she told me to run wild and take anything I wanted. I was SO EXCITED.

I ended up with multiple packs of wild rosemary, california rosemary, large-leaf basil, sweet oregano, spicy basil, sweet marjorum, two different types of thyme, dillweed plants, cilantro/coriander, red sage, blue african basil, three types of peppers  (jalepeno, habanero, and green), wild spearmint, lavender, and two tomato plants--cherry and grape. All for my raised herb beds.

Wild. When I said I was excited, I meant it.

In retrospect, if I wasn't so set on getting my M.D., I would love to do nothing more than travel the world, finding new spices and learning new recipes and new styles of cooking, and then come home to feed people. And then go out and do it again. I wouldn't set up a restaurant, because that type of cooking gets old, but still...I love it.

I would kill to get my hands on those.

In a second retrospectionishness thought, I'd probably get fat. So maybe it's a good thing I only have one life.

(Last February, an acquaintance was asking what to get his girlfriend for Valentine's Day. I said, get her a pretty red pot and stick a nice rosemary plant in it. You want some color, add some african basil and a thyme plant. Can't lose with that, right?  More useful than a potted flower and doesn't die like a bunch of roses. Unless you really are a plant-killer. I don't know if he ever did it--but he should've.)

Cooking is great. You might not even think about it being something special, but it is magic, just a little. You throw a bunch of random things into a wok, and you get something totally unique and amazing out of it. That's all magic is supposed to be, right? Changing one thing into another? Getting more out of something than the sum of the whole? Creating?

Whatever it is, it makes me happy.

Also, because I like you so much, I'm going to give you a really reaaallllly simple recipe that a child could make; but it tastes better than anything you'll get at a restaurant.

This is not actually the recipe, but it looks close.

1 bunch asparagus, cut into 1-inch pieces. (the way you get the tough part off, before you cut them, is to hold the end and the middle, and bend until it breaks itself. Throw the end away. Some people actually don't already know this.)

1 1/2 cups cherry/grape tomatoes, sliced in half
1 good-sized clove of garlic. Don't be a shrinking violet, it makes it much better.
3-4 TB balsalmic vinegar
2 TB olive oil
dash of lemon juice (use a lemon.)
salt and pepper

fresh basil cut into strips
sundried tomato and basil feta

Put the asparagus in a skillet with about an inch of water. I usually add McKay's chicken seasoning to it, and some salt. Let it go until it's tender but not mushy, around 3 minutes of boiling, give or take. Drain it and put it in your serving dish.

The next set of ingrediants all go into another pan. Cook them about five minutes, until soft and yummy. Don't let them burn! Layer them over your asparagus.

Sprinkle the feta and basil on top. It's really pretty, and super tasty. I...think I may go hunt up some asparagus now. Enjoy!

Sand Song

This was supposed to be two paragraphs. Well, the best laid plans...

A long time ago, farther back than the living memory of the oldest trees that stand above the rocky cliffs, and after the birth of the great boulders that now form the smallest grains of sand, there was no music in the sea.

The shores were silent. The waters rose and fell, following the pull of the moon, but they did so quietly, barely stirring the shells on the tide lines. The gulls fished, but they did not have the heart to cry out. The breeze thought it a sad place, and left the sand lying where it had been for countless years.

Poseidon did not know what music was, and so the ocean lay quietly. There was no joy in the sea because there was no joy in his cold heart, in the shifting shadows where he stayed deep under the waves. He might have discovered it had he ventured to the shore, for there were people who possessed the gift of song there, but he did not. Instead, he brooded deep in his weedy palace, and ignored the edges of his kingdom.

A young man lived within sight of the great expanse of blue water, and his greatest joy was to spin music from his violin. In the evenings, when the day's work was over, he would go sit by the sea, in a secluded cove, and play to it.

As he did so, he noticed that the water would often begin to hiss over the sand, echoing the rhythm he set with his songs. A gull or two, flying in to listen, would give a racous cry in time to the music. Once, finally, as he threw his heart and soul into his music, a wave crashed onto the shore in counterpoint, rushing up the beach and drenching him where he sat, before receding. He thought it was glorious.

The man loved bringing life and movement into the ocean he knew so well, and year after year, he grew increasingly skilled, able to coax more and more from the waves, which now swept in and out of his cove rhythmically, regularly, to the cry of gulls and the sigh of the wind as it stirred the sand, accompanying the beautiful sounds he drew out of the wood of his worn instrument. Soon was added to this the melody of laughter, as first his children, and then his grandchildren, came to race along the beach and chase the waves up and down the cove.

But the man was growing old, and he know that when he died, this gift would be lost. And so he made up his mind that he would take the gift of music, and present it to Poseidon.

Bidding goodbye to his family, he tucked the violin under his arm one last time and began to row out to sea. The waves lapped around him, the only movement on that vast smooth surface, as he made his way out beyond sight of land. He stopped rowing and looked around, alone.

The old man knew that Poseidon would not hear a voice as small as his. It was an impossible task he had set for himself, and yet he felt that his gift was worth any cost. And so he lifted up his old violin and began to play as if it were the last time. He threw his entire soul into the song, and such was his skill that soon the waves began to build into mountains around him, foam flying off of them and spray filling the air, driven by the tempest that strove to match the voice of the instrument in his hands. The breakers echoed the slowing beat of his heart as they began to surge in rhythm, and so when the violin finally dropped from the old man's lifeless hands, it was if his heart and the song continued, blended into one melody carried by the storm.

What the old man's one small voice could not do, the sea did for him. The ocean found its voice in the storm he raised with his music, and it carried even to the darkness where Poseidon rested. And he roused himself, and rose to hear this strange thing that had come about by another hand than his. He heard the wild music and felt the power in the dance of the waves, and he was moved by them. He looked at the ocean as he had never done before, and he saw the beauty of a world where the sea moved and sang with a never-ceasing rhythm.

But it was still a mystery to him, how to make this music, and so he dove deep, questing for the thing that had brought this about. He found the violin resting in a bed of sand and seaweed, its polished wooden surface reflecting the shadowing play of light on the moving waters far above, and it was beautiful.

With one finger, Poseidon plucked a string. The note pleased him in its watery resonance, and so he plucked it again and again, matching the surge of the waves that still echoed to the beat of the old man's heart; and as he did so, the water along all the shores began to ebb and flow in concert with the sound. This pleased him even more, and so he ran his webbed fingers along two string. The sound was discordant, but it fell into place with the first, and the gulls heard it and rejoiced, screaming their approval  over the rocky coastline. And Poseidon heard the beginnings of music that he had created, and he was joyful.

He is not a man as we know men, but it was in him to feel gratitude for this gift. And so he took the barest tip of a finger and brushed it along the highest and smallest strings, and the wind along the shore began to play in the dunes. It is so faint that you cannot always hear it, but if you listen closely, the melody that the old man was most fond of still echoes along the shore. It is wild and gentle, with the promise of a storm to come, backed by the wash and ebb of the pounding surf and the cry of gulls. When it stirs the dunes, the sands whisper the Prayer for the Dead and the waves still crash in the rhythm of the old man's heart.

Poseidon keeps the violin always by his side, playing upon it the melodies that became the music of the sea. Most of the time it is a gentle song, but sometimes he sits for too long in the darkness of the deepest seas, and then he plays the same wild song that he heard when he first knew that there was music in the world. And the waves crash and pound, and the wind shrieks along with him, until he grows calm again, and the sea grows calm with him.

Stolen Love Song

How do you fight the lie that you've been leading
When the shame of giving in feels as natural as breathing?
You can't remember how it feels to say no
To the dark thing that grips you--can't seem to
Let it go

So if I give in, I trust that I'll be covered
With the strength of my father and the courage of my mother
Save me from the darkness, with dawn--
Send me back to war on the wings of a love song

We watch the rain fall, washing all the colors
From standards that I took up when we lost sight of each other
The storm shows the way this battle has to go
But how do you win when defeat is the
Only thing you know?

So if I give in, Lord help me recover
Lift me up on the stormclouds where you hover
Banish all the darkness--at dawn,
Send me to war wielding the steel of a love song

So it's back on my feet now, and I'll go again...
This battle isn't nearly done.

So if I give in, you'll be my shield and cover
I trust you'll pull me up, and we'll fight shoulder to shoulder
Piercing through the darkness--with dawn,
Set the world on fire with the truth
Of a love song.