On Sunday I wrote a poem about my weekday commute being my “breathing place.”
The poem starts like this:
Along the road among the trees the wild things live and wait for me…
That day, we had torrential rains in our neck of the woods.
The next day, as I drove to work, right smack in the middle of the road, a wild thing was waiting for me, all right.
Well, hey, Beaver:
Covered in mud and what looked like bits of bark, the Beaver considered me (or my car, anyway) for a moment before carrying on with its business. Building, I suspect. Possibly home repairs. Maybe it just needed a breathing place for a minute, too…a break from all the dam work.
(Sorry, y’all – couldn’t resist having a little pun).
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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the March Slice of Life Story Challenge
I happened to catch sight of it through my kitchen window.
A big brown creature in the yard, over by the birdbath.
First thought: Neighbor’s cat.
But in the milliseconds it takes to process thought, I knew the creature was too big, too low to the ground, too oddly-shaped, too uniformly brown to be the cat.
Oh! A groundhog.
They’re pretty common around here, usually sighted standing up by the roadside like little totems.
The groundhog sniffed the air like a dog…what does it smell?
I grabbed my phone for a photo. Better yet, a video…the granddaughters will want to see this…
The groundhog bunched itself up. Humpbacked, it made an about-face and trotted away alongside the fence toward the woods.
That’s when I saw its tail.
A very long, very ratlike tail.
You are not a groundhog.
Their tails are furry. Wider, flatter.
Clearly not a beaver, although, come to think of it, how does one tell a beaver from a groundhog unless one actually sees the tail?
What ARE you, strange creature?
A muskrat.
I showed the video of the muskrat to my husband.
“It’s HUGE!” he said. “I thought muskrats were a lot smaller.”
“It has that rat tail,” said I.
I showed the video to friends at church.
“It’s not a muskrat,” said one, an avid outdoorsman. “It’s a nutria.”
My husband and I have lived in these parts for over thirty years and have never seen a nutria before (to our knowledge; maybe a former “groundhog” or two may have been this creature instead?).
We had never even heard that nutria live ’round here.
My daughter-in-law, a Louisiana native, knew it right away: “Oh, a nutria rat!”
I looked them up.
Nutria have frothy white whiskers and giant, terrifying orange teeth. They live in marshlands. This one was headed back through the woods toward a field; marshes are nearby, but in all the recent rains, everything out here is marshy. Nutria also detroy wetland ecosystems (I learned on Wikipedia that Louisiana loses wetland acreage the size of a football field every hour). Needless to say, the creature is a rodent. Invasive. A nutria can weigh upwards of twenty pounds. They carry diseases that can be transmitted to humans.
I stopped reading these fun facts and switched to symbolism instead.
In various cultures, nutria stand for good luck. Balance. Humility. Resourcefulness. Strength. Resilience. Prosperity. The interconnectedness of all things.
I’ll be honest: It had a rather friendly face (I couldn’t see the teeth).
Its rather inocuous name means “mouse-beaver.”
In Brazil, however, nutria are called ratão-do-banhado: big swamp rat.
I gotta say the Brazilians hit the tail—er, nail—on the head.
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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
For today’s Open Write on Ethical ELA, participants are invited to write poems about “places we call home”.
Nothing pulls on the heart like home… I can almost hear the Beatles’ song “In My Life” playing in the background: “There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed…” The memory of these places, and the spirit of them, really are the theme song of our lives.
Of all the places I remember and could write about…have written about…I choose my home now. I have lived here the longest. I became a grandmother here. I have learned a lot more about savoring here. Usually I try to make my poem title do more work, but today, no other will do.
Home
In the first moments of pale-pink light the big brown rabbit comes from the woods to nibble away at the clover
in the ever-thickening branches of the crape myrtle my husband and planted years ago I can spot hummingbirds hiding among the leaves always alone never together
they dart, one by one to the kitchen-window feeder
silvery-green females perfect, pure ethereal as fairies
a male, ruby fire at his throat (brighter than the cardinal-flame landing over on the fence) impossible greens and turquoise shimmering on his back
unaware of his utter tininess he sometimes perches atop the feeder as if to say I am King of this Water-Mountain
a pair of doves feeds on the ground by the tree line then takes flight on pearly wings vanishing in the pines and sweetgums where their nest is secreted
robins, robins everywhere just last week a speckled fledgling on the back deck both parents in the grass chirping ground-control instructions
the mockingbird in the driveway strutting and stretching his banded wings as if he knows how legendary he is
a trill of finch-song from a nearby tree so plaintive I fear my heart may burst
and the bluebirds oh the bluebirds
if only I spoke green language I would explain that I removed their house from the back deck because it is about to be torn down
that I waited until their unexpected second brood flew out into the world
never imagining these parents would return to the empty rail corner a day or two later clearly so puzzled to find their house gone…
if I were the hermit wizard-woman of this semi-enchanted nook (as I sometimes pretend to be) I would have known what to do
but my unmagical self did my best: placing the birdhouse atop the old wooden arbor built by my oldest when he was a boy
well away from the impending deck destruction
and to my astonishment the bluebirds have followed their home
I do not yet know if more eggs have been laid in the house relocated to the arbor
but as evening draws and the pine-shadows fall across the arbor and the crape myrtle and the big brown rabbit back in the clover and the old dog’s grave and the old deck about to be made new
I ponder my length of time on this Earth and the continuous carving-out of home how it goes on and on
a path forever unfolding before me that I must follow
like the doe in the little clearing across the road pausing for one long moment with her two fawns before disappearing in the leafy green
One fawn has already been ushered across
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with thanks to Ethical ELA and Two Writing Teachers for the inviolable, invaluable writing spaces and the inspiration
Dear Goat In The Pasture At The End Of The Street Where I Make a Right Turn On My Way to Work Each Morning:
I just want to say thank you for lifting my spirits on weekday mornings as I drive by your pasture. You cannot know that I look for you and your herdmates, or how the sight of you fills me with inexplicable peace. Perhaps it’s the idyllic setting, the pastoral scene with its inherent restfulness. Maybe it’s the continuity. Your pasture remains as it always has, while all around us fields are being bulldozed and sculpted for the coming of houses. The trees farther down this road are being timbered this very moment… I wonder: Had birds already nested in them? Were there any little eggs that are now lost? It’s possible; this is March. Isn’t tampering with birds’s nests and eggs a crime? I digress. I cannot help it, watching the trees come down even though I know the new houses to be erected will be homes where people will build their lives and live their stories, where children will grow up… meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a man is busily destroying people’s homes, sending them fleeing from danger like animals trying to outrun a raging forest fire, in search of a different place to survive…
Yesterday as I came through here I heard a bird calling and wondered if its tree is gone. Will the big, beautiful,snowy-feathered hawks soon be gone, too? I haven’t seen one for weeks now. I keep watching. And in all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen skunks until last week when I saw two dead in the road and my son saw a third. We didn’t smell them, thankfully. Makes me wonder about them never seeing the end coming…
I don’t know why I should be telling you all of this, dear Brown Goat in your green pasture so often dappled with new morning light when I drive by. All I really meant to say is thank you. I see you grazing in the grass and a tiny bit of balance returns to the universe. Your placid nature spills into mine. You somehow impart the right and needed mood for the day…
I am grateful for you.
Sincerely,
An Admirer
P.S. I would deliver this letter to you in person but I suspect you would only eat it… I’ve had to eat my words before and it’s not a particularly pleasant experience… trust me.
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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Slice of Life Story Challenge every day in the month of March.
lit bits and pieces 