a few minor changes

inspired by the poem "Absence" by Wislawa Szymborska

A few minor changes, or a big move? This is the question floating in the empty space where the coffee table used to be— the one I dragged out to the street two days ago, the heavy one from wood the teens helped me find, with the fold down wings.

Though my house serves me well and feels homey, I came back from vacation yearning to live in the woods again, or at least nearer. To put my feet to Earth, first thing in the morning. The smell of pine and bay baked into the dusty trail, my body propelling me forward to read the news— who’s fruiting, who’s budding, who’s fallen down and will no longer be drinking from the cool waters of Strawberry Creek.

It’s not just the pleasure of the forest I miss, though that’s in the foreground. It’s also the sense of purpose, of motivation I feel— the ideas that just sort of shimmer up without me even trying. It’s what drives my will to work, and without it I’m running on fumes.

The last time I lived on the hill, I was chased out. I don’t think I wanted to leave, and for months I cried over the trees left untended, unvisisted, unsung to.

Now, I get the sense that others have filled the void. There are trinkets and gifts on branches, thimble berries already plucked, nettles waving like they’re glad I’m home but haven’t missed me, much.

Still, I long to return. To where my feet feel right, where my heart can turn to face the sun like the head of a gigantic sunflower, heavy with seed. I, too, want to feel pollinated. I want ideas and love to intermingle in my mind as I sketch plans to remove the poison hemlock, to rip the English ivy from its throne.

In the silent space, I sit and wonder. Is it wrong to seek perfection, in a place I’ve already left behind? Yet my heart knows the pull it felt when I saw the spiky oak leaves wave in the hot July sunlight— we are thirsty, they cried, please don’t forsake us on this soon to be barren hillside…

And so, I climb the inner walls of my discontent, stripping doubt from the eaves like old cobwebs with a broom. If not Craigslist, then at least a gander at Zillow, a community facebook wall:

Woman seeks home in the forest. Moss and lichens a plus. Access to water and soil, a must. Sunlit windows and a table to write and eat on. Birds, deer, and raccoons welcome.

If my dad had married Pam Meadows, would I be Snow White? Country girl in a big wide wood, plenty of animals to help do the laundry, whistle while you work? If my mom had married Kevin McCoy, would I be an adventure journalist covering forest restoration across the state, reporting wildfires and brush burns and the need for cattle ranchers to stop diverting water from the salmon runs?

Well they didn’t, and I’m not, so here I am attending city council meetings in the hope that someday I’ll be brave enough to get up and say—

Let us restore the creek and all else will follow.

Maybe they’ll even give us funds to have fun pulling tough roots and planting native seeds in their wake— lupine and poppies and coyote mint. Maybe if we’re lucky, a small grove of manzanita to call our own.

I look out at my concrete garden— the hard plastic of the lettuce pot and the shadows cast on the fence by bamboo. A fly buzzes, no different than the sound of one out on the trail, only here its sound bounces off the walls, reverberates and scurries, leaving me anxious to find somewhere a big wider to call home.