Field Notes #12: Who Has Seen the Wind? (Pt.3) by Patricia Karamesines

This is the third part of a three-part entry. To read part one, go here. To read part two, go here.

Glancing at Belle, I can tell she needs water, and soon. I lead her away from the beaver ponds before she’s tempted beyond her ability to resist to drink from its giardia-laced teapots. I hurry her to the shade of a big juniper, another of my stops, and sit down in the dirt beneath a broken branch that hangs across the trail. Obviously, Belle needs more water than I can provide by cupping my hand. I relent and pour her a drink in the canteen lid. She laps four or five lids full then lies down in the shade without my prompting, her shoulder pressing against my knee. She pants rapidly but seems to have gotten enough to drink, refusing another offered lid.

Looking around inside the juniper’s shadow, I notice a single penstemon blossom, looking like a wind sock on a pole, glowing red against the litter. Its color leaps to the eye from a backdrop of live blue-green and dead brown juniper stubble; last year’s curled, tawny oak leaves; green wisps of grass growing in a clump; spider webs clouded with dirt and other debris; and round, purplish-blue juniper berries dropped into grey-toned soil speckled with blacker grains, probably of decayed organic material. From somewhere up-canyon, a canyon wren’s laugh pipes its downward-falling scale.

Advertisement

Seaside at Eighty by Karen Kelsay

We’ll breakfast at Las Brisas when we’re gray,
Discussing all our commonalities
And differences, admiring the breeze.
We’ll chatter and remark about the way

The rocking eucalyptus branches seem
To hammock threads of morning sun along
The coast. Pale clouds will sift to butter-cream
And melon, swimming through a blue sarong

Of tinctured sky. I’ll scan the beach and sea
Where I once played in tide pools as a child,
And you will say: The waves are much more mild
On Devon’s shore, I really miss Torquay.

I’ll point to where the purple mussel shells
Are found, then Catalina’s outline might
Appear beyond the shoals of blue-green swells.
We’ll venture down the path and look for white

Sails cutting southward, tilting toward the shore
Where long ago we bathed and sunned before;
And like two cockle halves worn from the weather,
We’ll linger by the oceanfront together.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

To read Karen’s bio and more of her verse on WIZ go here, here, here, here, and here.

Coyote Willow Leafing Out by Saul Karamesines

__________________________________________________________________________________

Spring elegance.

Fresh as a Daisy by Carla Martin-Wood

__________________________________________________________________

Gaillardias can be just as fresh as daisies.