Linz, Austria (http://www.sternwarte.at) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6756468
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Potato Salad
Grandma once told me not to defy her, and while the context for her saying this was my quibble with a comment she made about how old dad would be if cancer had not claimed his life all these years ago the memory conjured is earlier: helping her prepare potato salad for my high school graduation party, the two of us in my parents’ kitchen standing on either side of the counter at least twenty pounds of boiled and peeled spuds in a pot next to our shared cutting board, each of us holding our own knife, ready to slice them into a large bowl where she would season the salad according to a family recipe she knew by heart. I recall being glad to assist her and went to work with enthusiasm, quickly piling up potato pieces before she stopped me (her voice had firmness like the faintly golden potato flesh we were cutting) and told me every piece needed to be precisely the same size, whittled into the shape of a half-moon. I swear to you I gave my best effort returning to my task as her sous-chef with determined focus, eager to please. But grandma’s watchful eye under arched brow deemed my results to be inadequate. More than half a century my senior she gently placed her hand on top of mine then said “It’s okay, honey, I’ll finish these up on my own.”
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Winter Solstice
Flying a redeye on Winter Solstice eastbound over the lower forty-eight there is calm beyond clouds, among stars, on the year’s longest night, relaxed aboard a cross-country jet whose turbines’ whir lulls me to sleep as we race toward sunrise in Boston.
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Bowls
Her ex-girlfriend is a potter by trade and made her a set of bowls as a gift years ago when they were still a couple. Not wanting to have them in our kitchen after we decided to share a home, she packed them in a box where they remain stashed in the back footwell of her car. Each time we drive somewhere, I can hear them rattle and clink when we go over bumps – and I wonder if she hears it also.
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Buddha’s Hand
After nightfall, she leads me through a gate into the garden behind the barn. A floodlight nestled where the eaves meet at the apex of the roof shines down. There is a modest shrub whose amber fruit reaches from the shadows with many gnarled, elongated fingers, splayed in a gesture that appears both to beckon and to bless. Gently, she grasps one by the wrist, twisting it off a thorny branch, then gives it to me, telling me to scratch its bumpy palm. Citrus aroma wafts into my lungs when I inhale. For a moment, all I want is to be naked, wrapped in each other’s arms. -
After a First Date
"Let's be in touch!" she said, after we spent what I thought was a pleasant couple hours together, walking the Stanford Dish trail on a glorious day, the sun shining. We marveled at a coyote leaping across a field so lush and green from all the recent downpours, we talked affably, we reminisced - and at the end, we hugged. I knew going into our date the odds were not in my favor. It seemed almost a miracle she replied to my note in the first place - a friendly inquiry from someone she'd never met. Should I be surprised I didn't hear from her again? -
Pomegranate
A pomegranate yields under the knife that slices it into equal quarters and stains an oval, wooden cutting board when blood-red juice escapes from its tough peel. A pomegranate has secret chambers, pith-webbed dimensions folded on themselves and accessed only by a probing thumb where an array of ruby seeds is found. Within one pomegranate is hidden half a cup of seeds. When mashed, these produce two ounces of juice, which is just enough to flavor a couple of martinis. The tart juice of a pomegranate seed may betray your daughter and consign her to an unwelcome suitor, your sorrow at this breaking the world into seasons.
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Making Waffles
The first one is always ruined, batter stuck to the hot iron: a sacrifice of egg and flour to hungry breakfast demigods who demand more butter, more oil in order for them to release the next onto my spatula. Devotedly applying grease to the black honeycomb altar before I attempt another, this offering is rewarded with a batch of several waffles – a puff of steam announces each as I lift them from their maker.
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Saturday Hike
Heart pounding, I climb Mount Diablo. There are coyotes in the hills below Eagle Peak. At the summit, crows fly higher than clouds. Sunset in two hours – I hurry back to the trailhead.
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Post Drought, 2017
The last drought was brutal to reservoirs. Moisture disappeared, leaving behind a vast alien landscape of craters, parched and absent their usual fill. Now, after more storms than we thought likely, lakes have returned to their abandoned beds and soil throughout the county drank enough so that groundwater is somewhat replenished. What is to be done in a time of plenty? Flood our lawns with care they were deprived of? Yesterday the sprinklers were on all night. This morning I hear the runoff gurgle down the sidewalk drain as it makes its way irrevocably toward the ocean. -
Elk of Tomales Point
Rain has collected inside a basin at the bottom of a hill on a spit of land between wind-whipped Tomales Bay and an ocean shoreline pounded by waves. Mirror-flat, reflecting a cloudless sky with serene, blue stillness, it is precious as a source of freshwater for the herd of tule elk who linger around it. The males are crowned with huge racks of antlers, bleached by the sun a pale tan like driftwood. On the hill above them sits a paddock, wound with rusty wire, abandoned for years. Dairy farms thrive inland from their preserve where fences enclose acres of meadow.
From the Firefly Galaxy 