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Evolution

The desert shrubs outside my window -- gray-
brushed-green-limbed tiny-leaved mesquite,
today ungainly, squat, a haven for the rabbits and
the quail -- will soon become unconquerable
trees with their ability to thrive in all extremes, from
paralyzing winter freeze to unrelenting summer

Velvet mesquite tree at Tumacácori Mission —
National Park Service

heat. Why, even in July they blithely point their

lacy fingers toward the sky. Do they defy or have

they simply learned to love the midday sun?

The ground seems inhospitable, but they persist.

Their roots find nourishment enough, whatever

water might exist and minerals secreted in the

sandy surface, the caliche, and the stores that must

lie hidden deeper still. And not by will or work but

gentle evolution did they gradually adapt here

over who knows what great span of years --

millennia, perhaps.

But I was only recently transplanted and I haven't

quite that long to make my roots secure. So I

look elsewhere for a cure for my fragility so as

to strengthen my enfeebled hold upon the earth,

relying on the certain grace of God and kindly

friends to tend my bruised and battered spirit

blinded by the dust and nearly toppled by the

searing winds.

The Happy Gift of a Delighted God

A Biography Made Possible by
Unlikelies and Improbables

I forgot to say thank you, Steps that
know my feet. For just a moment I
was unaware of being grateful that
you didn’t crumble at my weight or
open up and let me fall into some
not-apparent-from-above dark shaft
that might— though it’s unlikely I
admit but then a tick spent on
remembering will buy a boatload of
unlikelies, a great many more
improbables with just enough
impossibles thrown in to constitute
a whole biography— be lying
underneath the sod that hides the
fragile crust, be wide enough for
such a body as is mine, and slice
through all the strata to the hot
ferrous core of the planet.

Well, there you have it. Short story
long, it satisfies me to report the
sidewalk, lawn, and steps and
geologic layers I forget the names of
held me in the sky again. Such
benefits should not be taken lightly
when entire nations tread uneasily
on acres of swiss cheese covered
with a tissue, land mines hidden in
its shallow indentations, people
venturing upon remote paths and
fallow farmland fearfully if they go
anywhere at all. Well, it’s unlikely
that my daughter’s yard conceals
explosives, it’s improbable that
bombs are ticking in the cellar, one
less thing to fret about and so we
get to be a little bit upset about
plaintain among the fescue or
whatever. (Let me recommend the
use of vinegar instead of herbicide
or better yet a kettle full of boiling
water which won’t harm the other
growing stuff nearby.)

Is it so little, not succumbing to the
force of gravity, not becoming Alice
underground, not encountering a
tardy rabbit one might feel obliged
to chase as one approached the
door and thank you God and keepers
of the peace for that and warriors
and heroes too with reasons we’ve
forgotten not to keep it... not to
mention subatomic particles that
whip about their minuscule universe
at speeds with miles of zeros
somehow keeping molecules and
moons, what we call matter,
seeming solid? Is it worth emotion,
tears, and trembling to be still
intact after a mere kilometer’s
journey? Probably... as millions
might attest who hide with rare
success from scary guys with guns,
fanatics with a mission they’re
convinced is holy straight from
heaven, close enough at any rate,
come via their commander so-and-so,
the biggest fellow with the
largest weapon. Safe for now from
him I go into the cheering
lamplight; what I find illuminated
ought to take my breath away if I
had not been sated by this time
with gratefulness, and it is this:

Blessed recognition. I am like poor Lili
from the town of Mira; everybody
knows my name and they have come
to celebrate with such a smooth and
leave-you-feeling-cozy Cabernet
and Mama’s Pizza, eating,
chattering with family and friends
it’s been too long since gathered
thus in easy conversation.




Donald Zolan, Twins Kissing

I walk past a group of children. One says
that’s my grandmother with pride
of ownership. Well, and haven’t I
been lonely for that child’s voice,
missed being Mitch’s with the
emphasis on that apostrophe and S?
And so I change my destination from
the kitchen to the den and sit down
on the floor and play with Legos,
Barbies, children’s toes and noses,
let them style my hair with tiny
combs and make them say with
tummy pokes and tickles how
adorable and smart and funny
Grandma and Great-Auntie is and
wonder, how can this be ought but
the happy gift of a delighted God?

We haven’t any rights, you know.
It’s icing, all of it, that the inanimate
behaves itself and that my daughter
makes a life of love and difference
for she was born to be magnificent
defying entropy whereas the dust,
not being sentient, does what it
does swept up by wind and with no
reason to do otherwise falls
down again

Offered gratefully November 12, 2010

Bombed Mom on a Summer Afternoon

Still Trying to Get Comfortable

Before I learned to walk or talk,
I knew when all was well. It had to do with
certain smells: The best was aromatic pipe
tobacco—that meant Dad was home, content,
and settled in. I wouldn’t have to turn my face
away when Mama picked me up and held
me. Other times I did; the nauseous odor of
her breath repelled me when she’d had too
many cigarettes and too much wine.

There were reliable well-being and a
tasty lunch and hugs and kisses in the
smell of just-pressed shirts. I
could find Alma if I crept downstairs to where
we kept the mangle iron. (She bunched the
dampened sheets, all clean and white, into
the pillowcases, placed the bundle in the
freezer overnight, and said it made the
ironing go at twice the speed.)

If I smelled something in the oven in the
middle of the day, I thought that Alma might
be baking me a cake. It wouldn’t be my
mother’s flaky biscuits, not so early. Now I
know they were delicious; then I wanted
batter from the bowl to taste and frosting to
lick off my fingers.

I had learned to tell the comfort smells from
inauspicious ones, which made me get a
stomachache. I felt the fisting of my gut begin
when certain of my mother’s friends came by
for lunch. These were the ones she drank
with sometimes in the afternoon. I must have
found it terribly confusing, since I loved these
women too—they were sophisticated,
beautiful, and no doubt bored, since they
were overeducated for their mommy jobs, or
so they thought. They should have
volunteered more.

I adored them, even when
the air grew thick with stale wine and fetid
smoke and no one noticed when I went to
bed without a word and if I cried nobody
heard, and so I learned to be afraid of other
things because I couldn’t bear for it to be my
mother’s irresponsibility I feared, and even
then I knew that it was more than that, a
gnawing at the core of sanity. The day would
come when I would love and trust her more
than anyone on earth, but not until I’d
suffered as she did and saw her as a daughter
sees a mother still, but through a mother’s
eyes. More than forgiven, she became my
inspiration and my anchor. I thank God for
that. But some things one cannot forget; a
child who hasn’t had her second birthday yet
should not have been expected to be wise.

Sometimes, if it were one of Alma’s
afternoons, that dear good woman, who
had taken on the raising of her eight
or nine grandchildren, would put aside
her vacuuming and come into my room and
rock me in her arms and sing like a piano out
of tune, but she had such a soothing manner,
she was Mother Earth. I’m sure she weighed
two hundred pounds; I heard she wasn’t
even half that when she died.

One evening at the dinner table—I was still a
few months shy of four—our mother told us
Dr. Anderson had warned her, no
more alcohol. I cried for happiness. I
wish someone had said to me,
“Don’t count your chickens yet.”

A week raced by, and every night was better
than the one before, with games and books and
roasting marshmallows, The Shadow on the
radio. Ten days, two weeks had passed. I
finally let myself relax, an hour or so before
the sucker punch that caught me napping.

Pabst Blue Ribbon in a can—I saw it in her
hand as we were tidying the dining room,
and I began to protest,”Mom, the doctor
said—“ but then she brushed me off: “He
didn’t say I couldn’t have a little something
now and then,” defensively. I lost my
innocence, you might say, in a quarter-
minute’s condescension. I don’t think she ever
saw it as betrayal, even through the troubles
that still lay ahead. The gates clicked shut
that day. I’ve long since lost the switch.

Disappointment is a fact of life that proffers
lessons every child must learn eventually,
but not with such insidious brutality, not
a child of three, illusions dropping
like the tears she shed, and never, dear God,
never at her mama’s knee, with her the

object lesson: “Here’s what
not to do, my dears.”

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Top photo and 2nd photo (atrium) by
vnwallpapers.com

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