Lucky Lemon #9
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply as I stepped outside. The morning dew hadn’t quite subsided and I shuddered against the morning cool. Morning mug in hand, I sipped my cappuccino and watched the cars drive by. It was peaceful, the first quiet in a few weeks.
---
Stuffed in a suit, the aging weatherman reported the weather news of the decade. “Those who live in areas at low sea levels should work their way to higher ground. The storms will only last a few days but the downpour will be torrential along with high gusting winds and some damaging hail. Experts expect massive amounts of flooding. Again, I cannot stress the importance of getting to higher grounds. Crews have been working day and night building sandbag walls along the edges of the river to contain the flooding, but are only expected to minimize the damage. Experts recommend boarding up windows and doorways as soon as possible.” His non-regional dialect rambled on, but I stopped paying attention and threw on the grungiest clothes I could find.
I’d spent years playing near the bank of the dank and dirty river. As a little girl, my mother had taken a job at a grain elevator nearby its shores. The area fascinated me, as it was so different from my suburban home. Rough and seeming to exist only in grey and brown tones, the elevators were giants reaching far into the sky. Down below in the parking lot scurried the inner city’s scavengers: pigeons, rats, mice, and a fascinating array of insects. They’d feed on the grain dropped by the roaring trucks that made their way in to relieve themselves of their load. Now here I was, trying to save this part of town. Trying to save the grain that was food to many, not just those scavengers.
A thick pair of work gloves on my hands, I helped them build a wall of sand. One bag on top of another, each a new glimmer of hope that someone might live or a home might survive. Standing on the shores of the familiar river, I am astonished that the shells aren’t everywhere. I am reminded that there was a time this whole place was covered in water, not just this muddy stream. I remember my mother telling me that where we lived was once covered in water. I wondered if there were mermaids there, and if my family was descended from a royal family of them, like Ariel. Each shell was unlike those we’d found on our trip to Florida. She told me they were everywhere, not just here on the coast. At home that night, I spent hours digging holes in our yard, trying to find just one.
Way past dinner and even a little past my bedtime, my trowel hit something hard. I reached down and wrestled it out of the earth. Seeing it was just a small rock, I tossed it aside. As it flew through the air, I noticed a faint sparkle. Nabbing it out of the grass, I saw the imprint. An anti-seashell. The place where a shell once was, was now sitting in my tiny palm. I clenched it in my hands, desperate not to lose it, and ran inside. I showed it to her beaming. “It’s a fossil,” she explained, leaning over to tell me about the history of “some dumb rock”.
Back on my front porch, I can feel it’s going to rain. A large thunderstorm is headed toward our house, and I smile as two little hands tug at me. I look into my daughter’s eyes as she holds that same fossil up to me. It is the little things in life that inspire me. They forge together the words on my pages, not I. Like so many before me, I am simply the scribe, moved by the earth so that man may understand her. I am simply that. A poet, and nothing more.
---
Stuffed in a suit, the aging weatherman reported the weather news of the decade. “Those who live in areas at low sea levels should work their way to higher ground. The storms will only last a few days but the downpour will be torrential along with high gusting winds and some damaging hail. Experts expect massive amounts of flooding. Again, I cannot stress the importance of getting to higher grounds. Crews have been working day and night building sandbag walls along the edges of the river to contain the flooding, but are only expected to minimize the damage. Experts recommend boarding up windows and doorways as soon as possible.” His non-regional dialect rambled on, but I stopped paying attention and threw on the grungiest clothes I could find.
I’d spent years playing near the bank of the dank and dirty river. As a little girl, my mother had taken a job at a grain elevator nearby its shores. The area fascinated me, as it was so different from my suburban home. Rough and seeming to exist only in grey and brown tones, the elevators were giants reaching far into the sky. Down below in the parking lot scurried the inner city’s scavengers: pigeons, rats, mice, and a fascinating array of insects. They’d feed on the grain dropped by the roaring trucks that made their way in to relieve themselves of their load. Now here I was, trying to save this part of town. Trying to save the grain that was food to many, not just those scavengers.
A thick pair of work gloves on my hands, I helped them build a wall of sand. One bag on top of another, each a new glimmer of hope that someone might live or a home might survive. Standing on the shores of the familiar river, I am astonished that the shells aren’t everywhere. I am reminded that there was a time this whole place was covered in water, not just this muddy stream. I remember my mother telling me that where we lived was once covered in water. I wondered if there were mermaids there, and if my family was descended from a royal family of them, like Ariel. Each shell was unlike those we’d found on our trip to Florida. She told me they were everywhere, not just here on the coast. At home that night, I spent hours digging holes in our yard, trying to find just one.
Way past dinner and even a little past my bedtime, my trowel hit something hard. I reached down and wrestled it out of the earth. Seeing it was just a small rock, I tossed it aside. As it flew through the air, I noticed a faint sparkle. Nabbing it out of the grass, I saw the imprint. An anti-seashell. The place where a shell once was, was now sitting in my tiny palm. I clenched it in my hands, desperate not to lose it, and ran inside. I showed it to her beaming. “It’s a fossil,” she explained, leaning over to tell me about the history of “some dumb rock”.
Back on my front porch, I can feel it’s going to rain. A large thunderstorm is headed toward our house, and I smile as two little hands tug at me. I look into my daughter’s eyes as she holds that same fossil up to me. It is the little things in life that inspire me. They forge together the words on my pages, not I. Like so many before me, I am simply the scribe, moved by the earth so that man may understand her. I am simply that. A poet, and nothing more.
posted by Anonymous at 9:29 PM
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