Cedar Scent

Winter’s edge beckons and I am already at its door, a willing participant, an anxious night of unrest, a week of headlines that draw my thoughts to darkened corners, blood rising with the moon.

I have been rereading the same poem all week “Poem to a Gypsy Woman” by Duane Niatum, 1977. I told Kris today that it is comforting me—the hippie beatnik of it all—the woman, aflame. The blossoms, magnolias. Metaphors and language from that era hold me in their wool: they are warm redwood beams in a softly lit hut, clean and messy all at once; a pot of herbal tea, a stack of read and unread novels, a table strewn with drawings, a bodiless harp bouncing off of walls and into light beams that glitter with dust, a sourdough loaf spreading its crumbs across the kitchen counter. They are the metaphors of my parents’ generation, and I hold them close, breathe in their cedar scent as a balm.

This morning: dense fog turned white to peach and then vibrant fuchsia until my wheels spun into reliable winter blue. The Los Angeles I still love more than I believed I could.

This year: I learned the lesson of quitting, how to shed a layer of self that kept demanding more, more, more out of my time; the incessant reflection of society; the exhausted machinery that wanted to milk my essence dry; the fish tank for a mermaid. Goodbye, and thank you. I peek into the living room that glows blue from our tiny Christmas tree with its surfing Santa and dangling Washington ferry boats. Momentarily, I blur between the years; a harp string, a golden band.

I want to earn my soft creases and sun fade because it is worth it, if just for the sake of being alive and making choices that are neither good nor bad, if just for the sake of having a story to tell and toss across the desk, if just for the sake of revisiting the same room again and again.

Chopping wood in the desert: there is humor experiencing the breaking-in of the city woman, a pair of tight shiny leather boots; exposing her spirit to rocky hills and roads that leave a layer of dust on her car, pulling her closer into the world of shrubs and sharp thorns, frightening her with nighttime’s walkers—bobcat, bear, coyote, bunny, mouse, snake, quail, even the fox if she’s lucky, maybe the echo of a rifle.

Last breaths of the year, sacred in their finality, hopeful in their finality. My wheels travel back up the steep paved hill between large tan rocks and we curve and curve until the old sign “Lucky’s Hideout” is visible. I’ll take it all with me into the new year—last year I was being picky about what to bring, careful and intentional as if I desired control—this time around I willingly welcome the whole comforting mess to continue forth.

Niatum begins: “I pass the nights reading the ways we opened—”