Vibrations

One day my notebook leapt out of my back pack while I was searching for my keys.  It lay on the sidewalk watching foot traffic and pigeons, frustrated that I had left it alone without a pen.  Finally notebook crawled into a coffee house and eavesdropped on office clerks, legislators and students.  Using coffee in lieu of ink, it jotted down a wickedly funny story of a love triangle—or were they a throuple?—involving two corporate lobbyists and a legislative aide for the assembly rules and means committee.

Then, in a caffeine rush, it wrote two bawdy limericks, a sestina, and a witty haiku, though the kigo was ambiguous.




My camera slipped out of my pocket on the levee trail.  It took photos of granite rocks speckled with black and white and tiny bits of gold.  Camera found rose hips, lupine petals, and black ants carrying tiny bread crumbs.  Camera tried to take photos of birds but could only focus on a single green finch feather.  It tried to take photos of a jack rabbit but could only focus on a tiny patch of almond-colored fur.

 Then it fell in love with a chip of white quartz and took photo after photo of its shimmering silver face.  As thin as the moon, no bigger than a fingernail, translucent and milky.  But the quartz was indifferent as stones often are, leaving the camera in despair.
.




My late mother’s silk scarf escaped from my tote bag and flew across traffic on a windy, warming afternoon.  It was lonely, I think, missing the scent of lilac hand cream smoothing its shiny surface, folding it around a slender neck.  Scarf craved the embrace of human arms, the touch of human skin.

In another life scarf was a parachute.  Really she was, during the war in fact.  She was large, strong, and taut when flung open, able to cradle hundreds of pounds of life.





I want to feel the vibrations:

I drive a stick shift when I drive.
I cream butter and sugar
with a hand-held 
electric mixer when I bake.

I want my fingers on the tiller,
navigating.


But lately, it seems, my penmanship is frantic and sloppy.  I add extra bumps and grinds to the letters, and the words stand confused, questioning their own identity.

I add an extra mound to an ’n,’making it an ‘m,’
I add extra mounds to an ‘m,’ making it a caterpillar or an ocean wave.
r’s and l’s proliferate like tendrils of ivy invading the lawn.

Meaning is lost and I can’t imagine what I think if I can’t read what my hand writes.





Whatever it is I am channeling,
it is a wild energy, vibrating at the atomic level.

Can I trust the flow of this life? 
Perhaps I will allow it to carry me.