Fairy Tale Prom

Picking up a few wind-downed birch and fir branches, I found out just how soggy the backyard is. Each step was accompanied by a luscious squish — two words you don’t see together very often — the result of the frequent rains we’ve been having. This didn’t stop me, though, from making a fair beginning of the annual pruning of our fig tree, which is a fair-sized job requiring the use of our ten-foot aluminum orchard ladder, brought to Oregon from our old farm. I suppose the ladder is at least forty-five years old, in its present utilitarian incarnation. The elements of which it’s made go back much farther — so far, they may have once been star dust, dinosaur bones, or scrambled eggs, making it quite human. Called forth by the words luscious squish, the word chocolate also surfaces, along with the memory of my mother’s baking pans. An incarnation pinned to his black lapel: she waits patiently in her seat while he hurries ’round to her side to open the door of the car; he takes her hand, and off they go to the prom, he with three hands, her with one, which they notice and rectify during the first dance. Think of all the meals you’ve eaten, and how they’ve become flesh and sinew and bone; all the baths you’ve taken in water that’s timeless and been around the world in the form of clouds; then inhale the scent of your incarnation while you still can.

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