Category: Writing

Five minutes. I wash and rinse the dishes: a frying pan, a plate, a bacon crisping dish, a spatula, the dog’s water dish. Five minutes. The dog eats an entire bully stick. He’s never eaten one whole before. Usually just chews them. He’s not supposed to eat them whole. Now, I wait.

Salt trucks chalked the streets with music staffs. Anticipating the storm is a slow crawl on a deep cello. When snow arrives, will it come with the plinks and plunks of a violin? Will the day shift to the treble clef or pass like a dark wave rumble in lower registers.

There should be a word for the soft release of the refrigerator door – that slight tug of resistance before it gives. And maybe another word for the embracing kiss it makes when it closes again. I can hear it. I can feel it – like magnets separating and joining. Like lips meeting.

Daylight slides out of view. Color drains from the silvery peach puddles which grow dark at the edges where tire tracks pressed mud into thick grooves. In this freeze-thaw season, nothing stays the same for very long.  Tired, I close my eyes and dream of a large pelican with plates for lips.

Snow falls. Standing beneath a cluster of pines near a parking lot I can almost imagine a forest. Birds are leaves in leafless trees. Rabbit tracks zig and zag fresh and haphazardly across snow-covered grass. There is no hurry this morning.  The rabbit, the crows, the snowy pines. There is no hurry.

Tiny birds gossip in the trees. They’re catching up after having not spoken for a while. They have a lot to say. Where the sun hits the patio table, frost melts to a black sheen. Soon the shingled roofs will follow suit.  Pink arrowhead buds swell and bloom on the Christmas cactus.

The morning sun doesn’t look like a dentist’s waiting room. The clouds don’t have the drill torque sound of tires being rotated. The power lines running to the house don’t feel like laundry pulled warm from the dryer and the muddy drive smells nothing like the coffee aisle in the grocery store.

Early morning traffic pulses to and from through arteries and veins and across the bridges. Red lights, white lights flow. Mirrored buildings glisten like silver crystals jutting up from the city floor. From the plane, local topography is visible, lowland neighborhoods and the spired center. Large ships sleep in dockyard holding cells.

Sunshine skies drench sidewalks. The man behind the counter at the café smiles hello. He chats up his regulars. I walk. I walk. Already, it’s too warm for my east coast coat. They’re cutting the grass along The Embarcadero and the lines at the bread shops at Ferry Plaza stand six deep.

Large sea lion bodies with velvety skin laze in the sun on the floating pier. Interlopers nudge and jostle for space. Some bark. Others snort. There are other piers. Warm sun hits them just as fine. These spaces seem coveted. The squeezing in, the snuggling up, the coziness of sharing the bed.

We sat outside in wooden chairs at a small, green, metal table. We shared a lemon cake which she cut into nine bite-sized pieces. She sipped a cappuccino with cardamom. I drank a regular coffee. Facing twenty-fourth street, half-way between Mission and Valencia, the sun warmed our faces. The palm trees swayed.