Dear chokecherries,
Bright down low. Dear ponderosas and smokey chipmunks harvesting pine cones in a fall morning. Last night,
the creek was so clear and cold–
–two bull trouts flashed by, away, even the blooming olives could do nothing to lure them–we waded through the braiding stream and over driftwoods turning to mulch, casting nymphs, stripping back streamers through pools which, as the atmosphere darkened, grew no less clear, and we caught nothing–we were “fish, naked inside the wind.”
Something in me likens a letter I will never send, dear chokecherries, at the base of the ponderosa which reminds me of home, in which someone has hacked a terrible cave–for firewood? or just to be cruel? I touch the tree and look up, it branches less fully on the hacked side, but still, the tree stands higher than the rest. The top of it young as new growth on the ground, the lower branches darkened with moss, and this looking pauses itself in an inability. A lack of communication between life forms. My pity and awe, my blindspots, my inability to imagine being, the bark breaking–I want to throw all my ideas away, but they keep coming back to me–
Like nature.
Dear father, we are learning how to fish.
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