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Necessary Harvest


The distraction of disbelief is large. Broad as the sea from a single woman’s perch, staring out and across at only blue. The possible dissolve is not easy to strip down or shake off. Hole in the sturdy back of baby planet. Right before the eyes of all who have nurtured the communal body to carry her the distance. Shivering now in the delayed projections of freeze ahead. Or of heat.

What can I possibly pen to my father today who taught me about protest? About acceptance and tolerance. It’s challenging enough to form encouraging words for my daughter, repeating what I have learned about how to treat others according to the Golden Rule. Fortunately, she understands and took to the streets last night to march with others in outrage and dissidence.

Marking the poster board of her disbelief with halting words, crawling on the front hood of a stranger’s car for witness. And so the volcano wind of the unexpected blows across the sea. Onto the ocean where my father lives. A sea I cannot see from my high desert but I sense him there in his chair with the news. Moving to the back lanai calling in the birds he can feed.

Transcendental is the hold of forgiveness even as the future seems to be shredding. Worship the way of the heroes he carried to me in encyclopedias of alphabet given breath and flesh. Nonviolent protest the truest chestnut of my father’s eyes, honing the wise route to put us, finally, on the moon of tomorrow producing alternative water, fresh air.

Exotic is the menu of nature in rebirth. Spicy burn on the tongue, resisting profanity. Explosive gelato spooned up for granddaughters whose souls are only temporarily muted. Paternal lullaby. He lifts and replaces the needle on circling vinyl when the scratched groove threatens. Interruption. Volume. Antidote. Caution is necessary but optimism

 is the remedy. Bible of generations that precedes us both. I pull the bookmark from safe hiding between hieroglyphic rock, and return to the morals of fairy tales. Promise whispered to my child. Bread crumbs will attract the ravens. The ravens will come cawing. Grandmothers will translate. Crocodiles and whales will carry us across, outfoxing the crazy. Smoke signal sails

will grow visible from healing mainland to ready palms of island, to emerging continents of collective memory. I will not allow the Little Match Girl to perish in my version of the current grim tale. I will find her first. Fathers, many who are brothers, will bank a fire reflecting back on the water. We will warm her back to life. We will respect one another as the disbelief melts and we take dire lessons from nature. Fallow land followed by necessary harvest.


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