I should clean up the freesias in that vase. The blossoms are falling off the stems. They don’t smell as strongly this year as they did last year. But at least I have them. I searched in the market Sunday. There was only one woman with a few tattered bunches. No gardenias this year, though. Might be the drought. Only four rains last summer. Not nearly enough. The wells in the hills are running slow. Jane’s is only seeping and Raphael’s is entirely dry. The Casa buys water from the water truck. 500 gallons every three days for laundry and showers. It comes late at night, after the other guests have gone to bed. I am awake. I hear the howl of the transfer pump starting up and the splash of water falling into the empty tank.
I think of home and my own well and always full water tank. I think of the rain that never seems to stop.
Alders ring the pasture, unfurl trembling new-green leaves above pink salmon berry flowers.
I stand with my arms folded on the half door of the stall. At my back, stored hay that smells like last summer’s heat remembered.
The sheep arrange themselves at the mangers. Everyone shoving except for the old ram whose stiff knees counsel patience. One ewe scrambles up to stand in the manger. The others eat calmly from underneath her grass fat belly.
Fluttering in front of a mess of twigs and mud and spit glued to the top of a post, two barn swallows bicker over who will get the best nest above the hay loft and who will have to settle for second best in the feed room.
My oldest ewe leaves off eating and shambles toward me, head thrust forward, asking for a scratch on the chin and the chance to nibble on my gloved hand.
The swallows flicker in and out of the stall door. Warm buff bellies and blue-black heads, tails fletched like arrows. darts that throw themselves through the air, they circle the pasture above the robins that hop awkwardly, searching for grubs in the new grass.
The sheep settle into the business of eating their figure-8 chewing a soft, round motion that grinds the hay against their molars.
pansies, pensées, senses. thoughts— a bouquet of violets,
a violence of violets. voile, voice, voices on my radio. radio waves, waves on the beach head, brain head. my bullying brain carried off by the tidal bore.
how many times will you accept my ungenerous impulse to control your voice. my unvoiced vowels.
after frustration, incoherence. incandescent syntax of fury.
wrath: such a pretty word for the explosive, punching, punishing result of thwarted desire.
athwart: to lie crosswise. as my anger lies at right angles to this keel.
this ocean isn’t big enough, the far shore isn’t far enough to keep you safe. from my punching fist the slap of my open hand.
open hand: that should caress that should make an offering, make a confession.
but the eddy will pull me down again and we will drown in salt and longing.
