Of life, and fishing, and things we remember...

At a memorial last month, of a neighbor who walked these shores
to and from her house,
to and around town,
at rivers' and ocean's  edges
people counted the way they had come to know her:

Her grandchild almost drowned fishing for the big
salmon with her, how the love of fishing took her grandmother
to other states
to major and minor rivers
catching, cleaning, canning salmon.

She played bridge with younger women
and didn't mind losing, they all said. She just
loved playing the game.

I knew her as the beauty queen of Thomasville,
a small detail she shared when I told her how
I had come to teach at Thomasville
decades after she had left it
and how I had two beauty queens in my freshman class
two beauty queens who had to get A's in their classes
to be able to transfer back to the college of
of their choice.

I would have said, if I had spoken, that she still
walked like a beauty queen after all those decades
the one detail  I would have contributed
knowing her as I did,
a woman with beauty, and pride, and by chance
a title that connected the two of us.

Rooting for the sole wolf.

These resources, water, soil, verdant vistas  ought to help us get
along as Rodney King espoused
a year after he was beaten senseless in the middle of civilized LA, in plain view
on a crowded street. Are we just full of questions and expect the universe
to fold out the map of solutions?

Fear like wet leaves sticks under our city shoes
as we slowly climb a rugged path in
our impermeable clothes.

When the waterfalls come into view, one
in the West, one in the East, we feel
rewarded for taking this
outing in the Coast Range where a single
errant wolf is making its way through old groves of Port
Orford Cedars up rivers
to a mate
in this mate-arid territory where cell towers
can scope the topography
and pin-point each
resource that can impact the bottom line.

When all this is gone, waterfalls just pictures in someone's
album from a different time, when taking a walk in the woods
will become just a game we play on our mobile devices, will we be writing
fantasy stories about a fertile wolf that traveled hundreds of miles
as a new pioneer in search of his live mate under a double waterfall? 

Spring Touches

A trimmed
branch
an errand vine
corrected in
volume
light shining through
solid objects.

A spring silhouette.