The first time my kids saw a banana slug, they were freaking out. They were stamping their feet and screaming in the corner of the yard at the edge of the woods.
"Come quick, Mom! You gotta see this!"
"Okay, okay. I'm coming."
"Hurry, Mom! It's getting away!"
My husband and I were like, Wow. We moved here just in time.
In Cupertino, our old Silicon Valley home, one day we saw a raccoon squished in the road. Two turkey vultures were swooping around it. It was on a pretty busy street in a residential neighborhood. ("Busy street" and "residential neighborhood" should not belong together.) One turkey vulture had landed on the carcass. As I drove around the corner and saw it, I was amazed at the enormity of it. Giant black wings. Hunched neck. Just like an ancient, roadkill-eating demon. It flew off when I drove near. So I circled the block and parked the car near the raccoon. I had to park half a block away to find a bit of shade that would allow us to sit there, waiting for the vultures to return.
"Why are we sitting here, Mom?" whined the kids. "I thought we were going to Target."
"We are witnessing the wonders of nature, kids."
Nature. Yeah, right. I can't say that this was the time when I realized that Silicon Valley could not afford my kids the kind of life I wanted to give them. This was actually the forty-seventh millionth time.
"Why is that raccoon in the road, Mom?"
"It's dead," I said.
"Maybe a car hit it," said my seven-year-old son.
"Maybe it just got dead," said my four-year-old daughter.
We waited about twenty minutes. Many other cars continually zoomed past as the vultures circled and circled above the houses. They didn't land again.
The cool thing about banana slugs is that they can't get away. "Hurry, Mom! It's getting away!" is not something my kids have to worry about. They are no longer ignorant of its powers of locomotion. And there are plenty of them to observe. They, too, are animals that take care of organic material. Could they be the vultures of the forest floor?
They can't get away, which make them the perfect introductory animal. We see them in the garden, in the woods, on the porch steps, in the bushes, and even on the compost bin in the mornings, slurping their way around its conical shape, stretched out to their full length, sagging in the middle into a sloppy C shape. Into a banana shape.
My husband and I plan to get them into backpacking shape so we can take them on long trips in the Olympic National Park, an hour away. It's the most beautiful place I've ever seen, after Lake Superior. A month ago, we took the kids on a two mile hike in the Elwha River Valley. They complained pretty much the whole time. I tried to get them to sing boy scout songs with limited success. But just a few days ago, we took them on a five mile hike and they loved it! We were on the Dungeness Spit. And now we are highly encouraged.
They like the beach, the tide pools, the otters we see offshore. They like blackberry picking. Soon, they will like sleeping on the ground under the stars.
Kids, we are witnessing the wonders of nature.
Thursday, September 22, 2016
"Ophelia" published in The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review
Howdy, readers,
Check out my latest publication from July 2016.
http://thedoctortjeckleburgreview.com/works/poetry/poetry-ophelia/
This website will allow you contribute $2.00 to support my artistry. Oh, yeah… I'm telling you this because when you go to the link, you may be thinking, A) what's up with this?, or B) thank goodness I can now send Amanda two dollars. :-)
This is a really cool journal. Browse the website and enjoy it. I send gratitude to Poetry Editor Natalie Homer for selecting my poem. I had originally submitted it to a different journal for which she is a reader. She liked my poem but was overruled by the editors. Then she became the poetry editor at Eckleburg. She remembered my poem, looked me up, and asked to publish it. How wonderful! Thank you.
Ophelia
Oh, how overdone
I am, swamp-logged,
blue-lipped. Poets
invoke my pickled virginity.
All my life: “I know not
what to say, my lord.”
Now I know. Little girls
want to be me on Halloween,
wrapping themselves in weeds
and torn lingerie. I never
owned a white brocade
anything. But somehow
I am their adolescent
anthem, the early pure
death, flower-drowned,
bound in my own braids.
It’s embarrassing. Their reedy
legs remind me of herons
in the marsh where I was found,
my hymen grown soggy
and pecked out by a beak.
Death consummates,
not consecrates, even me,
fifteen and spot-faced.
Bride of a bird. Bride
of mud. Spare me Mr.
Millais and his Pre-Raphaelite
pomposity. I never
looked half so good dry.
Amanda Williamsen
Check out my latest publication from July 2016.
http://thedoctortjeckleburgreview.com/works/poetry/poetry-ophelia/
This website will allow you contribute $2.00 to support my artistry. Oh, yeah… I'm telling you this because when you go to the link, you may be thinking, A) what's up with this?, or B) thank goodness I can now send Amanda two dollars. :-)
This is a really cool journal. Browse the website and enjoy it. I send gratitude to Poetry Editor Natalie Homer for selecting my poem. I had originally submitted it to a different journal for which she is a reader. She liked my poem but was overruled by the editors. Then she became the poetry editor at Eckleburg. She remembered my poem, looked me up, and asked to publish it. How wonderful! Thank you.
Ophelia
Oh, how overdone
I am, swamp-logged,
blue-lipped. Poets
invoke my pickled virginity.
All my life: “I know not
what to say, my lord.”
Now I know. Little girls
want to be me on Halloween,
wrapping themselves in weeds
and torn lingerie. I never
owned a white brocade
anything. But somehow
I am their adolescent
anthem, the early pure
death, flower-drowned,
bound in my own braids.
It’s embarrassing. Their reedy
legs remind me of herons
in the marsh where I was found,
my hymen grown soggy
and pecked out by a beak.
Death consummates,
not consecrates, even me,
fifteen and spot-faced.
Bride of a bird. Bride
of mud. Spare me Mr.
Millais and his Pre-Raphaelite
pomposity. I never
looked half so good dry.
Amanda Williamsen
A New Home
My family has moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington!
Leaving Cupertino was hard because I had to step down from my job as the Cupertino Poet Laureate. I will miss the opportunities and connections it brought me, and I'll miss being able to give to the writers and poetry fans in that place. I had the privilege to lead a Poetry Memoir Class full of active, caring, talented poets who became a community, a group of friends. That was my favorite part.
My CPL successor, Ann Muto, will do an awesome job, I am sure. She will continue the Poetry Memoir Class, and she has graciously allowed me to continue participating. I get to send her ideas and exercises for the meetings. But I know she will lead things in her own wonderful way, and will bring new ideas to the city. Win win, except that I'll miss the Cupertino writers very much!
Life on Bainbridge Island will be balm for that. It sure is beautiful here. And it is joy it is to be in a green, lush forest instead of a city. No offense to you, Silicon Valley. You are amazing. There are many cool things about living in the epicenter of innovation. It was exciting and fast-paced. And it had everything: fancy boxed, organic, meal delivery services (competing companies!); organic flower deliveries that were so organically-composed that you couldn't choose the flowers; oodles of niche childcare choices such as language-based, religion-based, academic-subject-based, educational philosophy-based, dietary choices-based, rote learning-based…. Everything.... It was hard to find a daycare where my kids could just sit on the ground and eat a little dirt. You know, just relax and be kids. (We did find a wonderful place like that, except for the dirt-eating.)
Silicon Valley seems to have everything, but I'm meant to be in the country. I need space. Space for my brain. For my heart.
I'm now living on two and a third acres. That's the first thing I noticed in the real estate advertisement when searching for a new home. It looked like this in my mind: "Nice house for sale, blah blah blah, sits on TWO AND A THIRD ACRES." Growing up, I measured prosperity in acres. It seemed like an important thing to which to aspire. Do you have any acreage? Why, yes, I do. It's not very many, but it's plural. Hot damn. I couldn't ask for more.
One acre is cleared for the house, and the rest is part of a forest. My kids, ages 7 and 4, have made a trail (with my help) by wading through sword ferns and cedars. I clipped a few fern fronds but felt morally ambiguous about it. As a kid, I stomped trails into existence without any garden tools. But I decided to use clippers here because the ferns are taller than my daughter. Woo!
This place is so alive. There are deer and frogs and birds and squirrels and salmon and elk and otters and whales and orcas. And banana slugs. More on that later. Long story short: We love our new home.
Leaving Cupertino was hard because I had to step down from my job as the Cupertino Poet Laureate. I will miss the opportunities and connections it brought me, and I'll miss being able to give to the writers and poetry fans in that place. I had the privilege to lead a Poetry Memoir Class full of active, caring, talented poets who became a community, a group of friends. That was my favorite part.
My CPL successor, Ann Muto, will do an awesome job, I am sure. She will continue the Poetry Memoir Class, and she has graciously allowed me to continue participating. I get to send her ideas and exercises for the meetings. But I know she will lead things in her own wonderful way, and will bring new ideas to the city. Win win, except that I'll miss the Cupertino writers very much!
Life on Bainbridge Island will be balm for that. It sure is beautiful here. And it is joy it is to be in a green, lush forest instead of a city. No offense to you, Silicon Valley. You are amazing. There are many cool things about living in the epicenter of innovation. It was exciting and fast-paced. And it had everything: fancy boxed, organic, meal delivery services (competing companies!); organic flower deliveries that were so organically-composed that you couldn't choose the flowers; oodles of niche childcare choices such as language-based, religion-based, academic-subject-based, educational philosophy-based, dietary choices-based, rote learning-based…. Everything.... It was hard to find a daycare where my kids could just sit on the ground and eat a little dirt. You know, just relax and be kids. (We did find a wonderful place like that, except for the dirt-eating.)
Silicon Valley seems to have everything, but I'm meant to be in the country. I need space. Space for my brain. For my heart.
I'm now living on two and a third acres. That's the first thing I noticed in the real estate advertisement when searching for a new home. It looked like this in my mind: "Nice house for sale, blah blah blah, sits on TWO AND A THIRD ACRES." Growing up, I measured prosperity in acres. It seemed like an important thing to which to aspire. Do you have any acreage? Why, yes, I do. It's not very many, but it's plural. Hot damn. I couldn't ask for more.
One acre is cleared for the house, and the rest is part of a forest. My kids, ages 7 and 4, have made a trail (with my help) by wading through sword ferns and cedars. I clipped a few fern fronds but felt morally ambiguous about it. As a kid, I stomped trails into existence without any garden tools. But I decided to use clippers here because the ferns are taller than my daughter. Woo!
This place is so alive. There are deer and frogs and birds and squirrels and salmon and elk and otters and whales and orcas. And banana slugs. More on that later. Long story short: We love our new home.
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