Watermelons for every season

If I had any idea how much fun it is to have an albeit tiny and modest garden, I think I would had started one in my college dorm room. Well, maybe not quite. But seriously, let's talk about lettuce. Let's talk about arugula, mache, endive and mixed baby greens. Let's talk about how one day I planted seeds and now I stand in front of these little leaves and think, "oh my, you're growing so big and green, but we've only just met."

But really, now is the time to spend more time with your favorite greens. Last month, my boss and I team taught a vegetarian grilling class. I did a simple Caesar salad with grilled romaine which started off the season with what I would like to say, well, expanded my green horizons.

And it's what I love about the entire large and flavorful family of greens, it's a template to use for seasonal veggies and yes, even the roasted sweet potato in the cold hours of February finds itself on a momentary summery bed. A respite from being blanketed by all the packed dirt and snow. Whereas now in the heat of July, everyone wins with watermelon, cantaloupe, grilled peaches or fresh baked salmon all floating over shades of seasonal summery green beds in a bowl.

I recently made this salad I want to share with you for a Raw Foods potluck. I was looking for something simple, obviously raw (no pork in any form found its way to that party) and something with a bit of a kick. I am by far more of a vinaigrette gal over heavy dressing, so I wanted something light but not shy in flavor. I like my salads bold in taste and above all, I like to think of salads as aesthetic pursuits--the closest form of still life painting I will probably ever get close to.

I must admit that I have made this salad a few times this summer season and it has been devoured before any photos were taken. The best version of this came with the gift of greens from my cousin, Eric Wittenbach and his lovely green-thumbed wife, Cameron Green (I am sure you can understand by her name it is just one of the many reasons I feel so close to her). We were visiting their amazing homestead in the Methow Valley, the banana belt on the eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains in Washington in early June. My father came out to visit us in Montana and we rallied to Washington to help in their garden, float down the mighty Methow and have some good ole family fun. The morning we left, Eric ran out and cut some of their early greens and we stored them in our cooler which we drove over the flat plains of eastern Washington, over two mountain passes in Idaho and finally they made it happily to our crisper in the valley of Missoula.

If you don't have any cousins who are amazing gardeners or little shoots of your own, please find someone else's cousin at a farmer's market selling greens, a local produce stand or barter some cherries in your back field for a bag or head. I'd like to think of greens as the sun's greatest currency. The bright reminders of rain or maybe just a really easy and great way to get some fiber in your diet.

And finally, one more long winded reason why I adore this signature salad: watercress. I mean, how can you not adore something that grows wild in Ireland along streams and creeks and with a name like watercress, it sounds more like a verb. Part water, part plant this green finds itself in salads all shy in appearance, but then in flavor, it fills your mouth with a tangy pepper pop. Seriously. Make this salad with or without mint, but please not without some watercress. And not without the watermelon. Maybe you could send me some photos of the salad you make and call it still life with summer greens. Or not. Just make it to beat the heat and lose the fear of your kitchen on days with rising temperatures. Or just enjoy cracking open a melon all green with a hidden heart of red and please support your local farmers (I know this sounds as annoying as some bumper sticker, but really, it's true). The farmer you get your greens from is someone's cousin, brother, dad or some kid you used to baby sit for while his mother weeded her garden.

Watermelon Salad with Watercress

2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 teaspoons fresh ginger, peeled & minced
1 1/2 teaspoons grated lime peel
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 cups watermelon, 1/2" pieces
1 bunch watercress, thick stems trimmed about 1 1/2 to 2 cups packed
2 cups mixed baby greens
4 green onions, thinly sliced
1 cup cucumber, peeled, seeded & cut into 1/2" pieces
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped

1. Whisk vinegar, oil, ginger, lime peel, and garlic in large bowl to blend.
2. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
3. Add watermelon, green onions and cucumber to bowl of vinegar and let marinate for about three to five minutes.
4. In a large salad bowl, add greens and fresh herbs. Toss greens and then add watermelon mixture and toss to coat.
5. If you are going to take this on a picnic or not eat it right away, then I would not add the watermelon until right before you serve it or you can place the greens on individual plates and top with watermelon mixture.

This recipe originally came from Bon Appetit in June 2002, but I have made a few adjustments.

Revise for Reason

My father is an architect. I've enjoyed being able to say this for many reasons. As a child, I didn't have to explain anything, translate acronyms or find other verbs for what he does. He designs. Simply, he designs homes, churches, schools, banks, wineries and even prisons. But really, if I had to say what my dad taught me about architecture, it would be the importance of, what he calls, the sequence of time and space. Space isn't only the physical world around you, but your experience in that world that defines how you feel about that space. "Architecture is about 90% psychology and 10% math," he'd say. And I believe him.

I believe him because I used to go to work with him. I literally used to tag along with my dad some days while he went to meetings, helped tie ribbons on trees that needed to be cut down and sat in his office playing darts while the onion skin paper would pile on the floor. But mostly, I adored watching him draw. Even later in life when we'd have lunch and I'd be rambling about what to do as a career, my dad would pull out a yellow legal pad of paper and make notes of points I took way too long to make and take something as abstract as my aspirations and make them into concrete images. He never told me what to do, but what he found helpful and purposeful in having a job that forces you to do something for others. If I were to say, I feel lucky. It would be an understatement.

What I can say is that I have a long list of Robert Frost quotes and poems in my head, ice-fishing jokes as well as a need to not just nest where I live, but to get out and experience some place on a daily basis that feeds me. These photos above are taken from a place I try to go daily and the sequence of these shots goes from the beginning to the point where I usually turn around and head back. To my father, these photos would be a series to show a sequence of time experience--from the start of the dirt road that is flat and rising to the view of Lolo Peak that stands over this valleyed city I currently call home.

Currently, this trail that I run, bike and sometimes just walk has taken on a new experience. I'd love to say it is because with all this rain there are more wildflowers in the meadows than ever before or the watery song of the meadow lark seems even clearer this year, but really it is the view of Lolo Peak that has shifted for me. I know it has shifted for many Missoulians. Over three weeks ago, a dear friend of ours died in a wet slide avalanche while skiing a couloir down Lolo Peak. He was a very dear friend to many. Someone whom you feel lucky to know, someone who teaches you a lot about time and space sequence in how he lived his life. Someone who never told you what to do, but asked a lot of questions. Someone who loved this world, struggled with darkness, but I'd like to say knew there was always light, somewhere.

Chris Spurgeon was a wild and beautiful man. The first time I met him was briefly at a bar. It was the first weekend I had moved to Missoula and I asked my now-husband. "Who was that?" I asked because I thought I had just seen someone suited for a 18th century French film, someone rugged and worn with refined features. Someone quiet with most likely a lot to say.
"That man," Greg said, "rides his motorcycle 200 miles to run a 50 mile trail race. Wins the race and gets back on his motorcycle and rides back to Missoula and closes Charlie B's. That man is Chris Spurgeon and he's legendary."

And he is, legendary in so many ways--in so many ways that you cannot take a picture of. Someone's spirit has yet to be photographed I believe. But we take photos of views and vistas. Mountains and childhood friends. Moments we know we cannot take hold of, really. But we try. Today, Lolo peak isn't a monument as much as I see it as a reminder. Chris was someone who took his time--I mean took time to nap, read books, took long runs, needed a lot of time alone and thought it silly to kill dandelions. Aren't they flowers too as much as weeds? And so this view, this peak that stands and will stand longer than I know any of us will be standing is more of a reminder. It's a physical and beautiful reminder of how much time it really takes to get where you want to go. To say life is a sequence of events sounds all too easy and vague, but really maybe Wallace Stevens said it the best, "Death is the mother of all beauty."

Death is not the point where you turn around or even an end as much as it might just be part of the time and space sequence my father speaks so clearly about in design. This point or destination that lies beyond us is only speculation. We just don't have any pictures of this place. We don't know what lies after meadows, mountain peaks and buildings we call home. But we get sunrises, elephants, fathers who teach us and give us immeasurable gifts and if we're lucky, friends who live their lives as John Muir and hopefully maybe too, time to revise even ourselves.

Last year, I had an art show of poetry and photographs of natural landscapes of Western Montana with my friend Kelly. Chris Spurgeon with the only one of my husband's friends to come. I recall watching Chris quietly read every poem, lean in to every photograph and really look. Really take his time. Later he walked up to me and wanted to talk. He had a lot to say about poetry. I listened. He asked for a poem from that show and I want to share it. But I want to tell you is that I have been revising the poem. I have been revising it with Chris in mind, with Chris as a reason. So often we write from images or brief moments that might not make any sense at first. Sometimes it takes weeks, months, or even years or some event to help guide meaning into the poem. Or so I hope. As Robert Frost said, " A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom." I can only hope someday to be as wise as Chris. For now, I will focus on delight. For now, I will write and revise.

City Horses

Behind fences in the noon sun, they look tired

from all the work they haven't done,

left alone too long from boys who only fall

in love with women sixteen feet tall,

screened lips that flicker red. Even in Montana,

horses look silly in cities, slowing traffic down

to parade some past. A Pow Wow bridled

on a college campus. Up river, children learn to hide

without the long shadow of barns, spend nights

with the sky of parking lots instead of fruit

orchards to feed Appaloosas. The west,

harnessed by a lone billboard, preaches

the burnt word from a church's shot gun,

held in the hands of someone's twelve year old

son. But horses, even in their shoes,

find fields open to be alone. Alone to run.

Beaufort: The Lost & Found Mountain

I had a poetry professor once tell me any poem about the loss of a pet were the only poems he feared critiquing. Murder, Auschwitz and even incest were potentially tricky, but poems about pets dying--were practically off limits for him emotionally. It was as if, he said, dying pet poems were too emotionally driven making them inherently too difficult to write well. It's very hard to write between the thin line of sentimentality and vulnerability. I took his words as a challenge.

Now don't get me wrong, I didn't take his words so seriously as to want to coin myself as the dead pet poet, but the idea of pets and their emotional place in our lives- the sentimental or naive to the vulnerable and human-has been a topic of much thought. And really, let's be frank about it, some pets--perhaps like the hermit crab, gerbil and snake might be the ultimate challenge to write about since they are neither cute nor cuddly. But regardless of what kind of animal we've had, pets are markers of our life's events--they are the living penciled lines on a door frame of our emotional growth. The dog that lived in our childhood home, the cat who stayed after a divorce or the pet who out lives a spouse. Perhaps pets are too poetry worthy. And maybe because they don't talk, we get to look at them and remember what we want from our past. But in poems or not, pets are the valiant and important bystanders to our human experience. Or maybe they are our personal soothsayers dressed in fur suits.

This past Sunday, my husband and I and some friends went out skiing in the Pintler Mountains. We drove on dirt roads to the base of Warren Peak, just outside of Phillipsburg, Montana and while parking our car at the trail head, a dog came running up dragging a leash attached to his collar. No tags or name known, this black and tan hound dog whom we called Beufort, we assumed was lost. Before we began our hike to ski, my husband tied Beufort to the trail head. As we started to walk away, the dog just howled. We were at least four miles into our hike when Beufort showed up, wiggling his body and only having on his tagless collar. He stayed close the entire 14 hour day. He summited. He kept up. Even when it was post holing through rotten deep snow. He seemed happy and as if he couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

When we returned to the car, we had expected some note, some sign from Beufort's owners looking for him. There was nothing. And the leash that had been used to tie Beufort to the trail head was gone. It was dusk, we were exhausted and so we put Beufort in the back of the car and headed back to Missoula--over an hour drive home.

The next day we called every Humane Society in a three county radius. While on the phone with a woman from Butte's Humane Society, she told my husband, "sounds like someone was dumpin' a dog." It had never occurred to me that Beufort might have been intentionally left. Left to be found or left for wolves? I couldn't understand either. Our local Humane Society was closed on Mondays, so Beufort stayed another day with us. A day where we had to take him everywhere, even in the car to get groceries for he just howled and howled if left alone.

On Tuesday, I took Beufort to the good people at the Missoula Humane Society and I won't lie, it was hard. I felt conflicted as if I wanted to keep Beufort but knew in our tiny house without fields for him to run, he'd be miserable. Or so I told myself. Sure, I had read Where the Red Fern Grows to know hound dogs just want to hunt or really, they just need to run. And so I left Beufort with the hopes of a home.

As I got back into the car, I placed his makeshift leash on the passenger seat and drove to work. I tried to tell myself that I wasn't being melodramatic or indulgent, as I teared up. I was still shocked that someone thought it okay to just take a dog out to the wild for mountain lions or happenstance. I cried and told myself to be grateful for being part of Beufort's happenstance.

I'm also grateful for the sentimentality I felt for this lost or left dog. I'm grateful that logic and rational thinking hasn't plagued me of emotions or moments of pure and unabashed sentimentality. As Richard Hugo stated in his essay, "Writing off the Subject" in the Triggering Town, "If you are not risking sentimentality you are not close to your inner self." And really, that's what I believe my professor was really saying is the hardest place to write from and even harder to write well. But really where else can you write from? To write from your inner self--the place that holds memory, childhood, fears--is a place that we all have in us. It is nameless and without an address in this world. I believe it is the place we must go to when we want to write not for ourselves but for the Beuforts in this world. And really at some time in our lives we are all like Beaufort, dropped into this place to run and find a home. May we all risk howling to be found.

Here's the only shot of Beufort I have from the day on the lost and found mountain. I also give you this poem that I wrote long before I lived in Montana. It is also my only pet dying poem as of yet. But really I'd like to think it is more about living and being found than getting lost and dying.

Montana

You drove me out of the dog dish

of Missoula and into the country

where we got lost in the threading

of our voices with the windows open.

Everything was open then. We talked

about the winged man in Brazil,

your cat Lulu, my dog in Michigan,

and ignored the Bitterroot River.

The dirt roads kept us from lunch.

We sat on a rock wanting to undress

each other down to the skin

we would later learn

to sink into. And when we stood

on top of the butte, I stared

at your hair, dark like a stone too heavy

to move. As a child I collected agates,

smooth and black. Tadpoles

in a desert pool. I thought I could take the darkness

out of water. Today, I sweep up hair

from my dying black lab and I cannot stop

thinking of you. I cannot stop

the cancer chasing her while she dreams

of squirrels. Dogs are smart.

Or not. Either way, they don’t look back.

The Sounds of Goats

Some people have fetishes or obsessions that might seem slightly reasonable: shoes, Japanese women in cartoons and maybe even expensive cars imported by appointment. Me, I like ears. I've always liked ears and can even tell you it's not the shape of ears as much as thinking about all that happens inside of them. As if each of us posses not just one, but two black holes that are somehow connected to our inner selves. Or something like that.

What impresses me the most with ear usage are people who can hear perfect pitch. My grandmother, Anita, could be sitting at least 50 yards away while I was practicing the piano (as quietly as I could mind you for fear of her) and yell out if I was flat or sharp. I think it was her savant trait that she was never too shy to show off, well maybe not show off as much as make sure you were aware of it. Sure enough, she'd be listening to a radio program and tell you when someone was off, correct them by humming it correctly and then go back to listening. Just like that. Correct it and move on.

I cannot say I inherited anything remotely close to Anita's skill, but I 'd like to think in the handing down of genes, I share Anita's short stature and at least her attention to sound, minus the savant category. Musically, I never really showed much promise, I think Moonlight Sonata was my peak at the piano and for the clarinet, I think that peaked in eighth grade along with my interest in playing it at all. Despite my stint as the lead singer for a band, "Beige is the Color of Love" yes, that was in the 90's where we'd play songs like "My Mother's Broken Vase" I cannot say I've ever remotely excelled in music.

Despite all these attempts, I would like to think I could get myself out of a real sonnet bind if I needed too, Italian or Shakespearean. And like having the ability to hear perfect pitch, it's a skill rarely used for anything employable other than teaching. But really, let's face it, sonnet binds are quite rare if at all real. As you might imagine, I am completely making up "sonnet binds" in order to give myself some kind of credit for something.

What I do know is I can look at pictures of the Trevi Fountain, but it is the sound of an Italian ambulance or the scent of chestnuts even people yelling over each other in Italian, water running on concrete and falling onto cobblestones at night that make me miss Rome. You have to experience the sounds of a place to gather details that have an intimate connection to memory. And smells, well, that just takes you further into the black hole of nostalgia.

Nostalgia is something I associate with sounds as much as scent. This past week my mother, who recently purchased two goats, was talking to me on the phone and in the back ground I could hear her little baby kids talking back to her. It was all it took and suddenly I could smell the acid scent of their hair, see their beady black eyes and suddenly, I was back at the goat ranch.

Like my short stint as a lead singer, I once milked goats for a short period of time. Just one summer on a ranch in Southern Oregon. The plot isn't important behind the story of why I was there as much as how much I learned about goats. From milking them, to feeding baby goats with bottles to even learning their sounds and personalities. Goats are not pets. They are people dressed in fur suits with big ears. Yes, as you might imagine it, I was fascinated with their ears and with their sounds.

I will refrain from tangents or stories about the ranch at this moment. But what I do want to share is a poem. I know it is not a sonnet, but at least it is a poem about goats, for my mother, who's listened to my endless stories and rants and would bring home stethoscopes from work so I could practice listening. Enjoy.

Growing Up with Goats

The summer I chased a ghost out in a field
of cornflower blue, I learned to milk
a goat. No machine to rely on, just hands
finally not too small. And the ghost, or boy
more suited to Steinbeck, is nothing
but a backdrop to a barn full of ears
alert to all the wind sounds of goats.
Rough purr munching chip up to sky,
a rush of waves in a full stomach
giving all they have made in a day
back to hands above a glass jar.
When empty, goats want nothing to do
with you. They don't even want to look
at you, which is when I started to think
of my mother, when I started to be grateful
for my mother who has given all she has made
back, even when I just ate and left.
Sitting alone in a barn on the Oregon coast
with night shutting down sounds. Ghosts
silenced. The goats just keep eating. Stars turn up
their lights and the milky moon smiles
back with blue eyes, like you. You, so full.

Beets, The Back Story

Last night's picnic is today's rain. But I'd like to think of rain as the back story of spring. Behind all the blooms of cherries and scents of lilac are gray days of pressed clouds. Without days like today, our green would not be as vibrant. Thus is true for the beet or beetroot (to hopefully broaden our audience here) who sit long under ground and then rise to be unearthed in muted tones and once roasted--bleed all over your plate and fingers. The phoenixed root vegetable.

Beta vulgaris, the common beet, has an interesting history or back story as I like to imagine it. The first recorded history found beets along the Mediterranean in Europe and Northern Africa. And like most food, it spread thanks to violence, riots and a rise in popularity during war when roads were shut and people had to eat what grew in the ground--wild in their backyard. Yes, even our cozy chestnut folks, we can give thanks to Alexander's army storing them and throwing out their shells as a trail to mark their conquests. The beet, as you might imagine, have a far less glamorous past or story.

The Romans were the first to eat the actual root. Previously, just the greens were eaten by the Greeks and used for medicinal purposes--digestive benefits mostly. Conquering Europe was just part of the Romans claim to fame really as much as it was spreading the notion that the common beet root was edible. But perhaps my favorite back story lies in a wanna be Roman, Napoleon, who opened a school directly for the study and uses of beets--mainly for its sugar. And as you might have guessed it, the Napoleonic Wars helped for beet notoriety when sugar cane was no longer being shipped to France via England, something needed to be done.

Yet some could argue that beets have another history, quieter and with even less pomp. The common beet grew in monasteries and in peasant farms all across Europe and thrived in sandy soiled Poland where is grew wild. Borscht has kept Poles and Russian warm and fed since the 14th century. Somehow I see the beet living more in the flat fields of Poland then the gardens of Babylon.

Regardless of which back story you want to believe, beets certainly leave an impression even if it is the day after--as my plate above shows. Their modest shy appearance somewhat bulbous-ugly become poppy-pretty on a plate. Please don't limit your love for beets as a mere winter vegetable roasted in a pot pie. Think winter's white is summer's bloomed red. So in honor of the Romans who weren't too proud to eat the bulbs, here's a salad maybe even Napoleon would have eaten somewhere taking a break from conquering half of Europe. Enjoy.

Roasted Beets & Orange Caprese

6 beets, washed, roasted & sliced 1/4"-thick
2 oranges, supreme
8 ounces fresh mozzarella, sliced 1/4"-thick
3 tablespoons fresh mint, chiffonade
Salt, to taste
Olive oil, drizzled
Balsamic Vinaigrette, drizzled
1 tablespoon orange zest

1. Wash and trim beet greens. Wrap in foil, individually, and roast in the oven at 400 for one hour.
2. Let beets cool for ten minutes, then peel and slice them. Reserve.
3. Supreme an orange is really just cutting the peel and pith with a knife and then segmenting each section.
4. Chiffonade the mint, here's to pay homage to Napoleon. Chiffonade simple means ribbons. Remove the mint leaves from stem. Lay each leaf on top of one another, roll like a cigar and then with an knife or scissors, cut into thin ribbon-like pieces.
5. Arrange on a plate: first beet slice, orange supreme, mint.
6. This also looks good as a tower, as my friend-chef Benjamin Freemole, who will soon be famous (trust me), tells me, "the higher the tower, the more expensive it will look."
7. Sprinkle with a bit of salt, drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette and end with a garnish of orange zest.

An Elephant, Tulip & Chickens

There seems to be few things in this world that you can title without tripping on metaphor. It might be why I like how children decide on names. For example, a friend of mine has a son who is two and named their four chickens, grandma, snake, pumpkin and river. As if all that he knew, either good or bad, could be explained in those birds--which too often as adults we don't even see as birds, but eggs, pastoral, a Sunday meal, soup stock, compost.

Most days my head wakes long before my body, but I try to sometimes remind myself to name what I see, to catalog the concrete-wood floor, robe, teeth, water and peppermint. I feel lucky currently because this naming game is easy with what I see each morning from my window--elephant, tulip and chickens. The elephant I unearthed out of the Tiber, the tulip was picked by my husband and the chickens are a strange but playful reminder of daily living. A trilogy of sorts. But here I am getting metaphorical. Let's go back to naming things and being present.

Presently, I am approaching another birthday. I tend to be, if possible, more contemplative around birthdays as if they are some personal "new year" or time for resolution and reflection. So in times like these, I do what any almost sane person would do to avoid the usual malaise of aging, I make chocolate mousse.
See, here I am being grateful for having chickens because good eggs make good mousse. Mousse interestingly enough translates as froth or foam in French and if you have fresh farm eggs, your frothed chocolate might even be French worthy. Maybe.

Thankfully, I have both chickens and a simple recipe , which only has five ingredients. Thanks to my mother via the Grand Rapid Press, I'd love to think this recipe came from some dutiful Dutch lady diligent in not just her perfectly placed blond bobbed hair, but also in making a perfectly bouffanted mousse. But what I like even more about this mousse is the fact that my mother would make this dessert at random, if she had extra egg whites or just because she wanted to use her fancy green glasses. I recall opening the fridge as a child and looking for some snack say after school on a Tuesday and there I would see five green glasses filled with a shadowy richness. I recall just staring at them and naming each glass slowly: chocolate mousse.

And maybe that's why I have wanted to make this treat, not for showmanship, but some dessert during a weekday night to pause a moment. It is another reason I love this mousse, served in a tiny bowl or glass, each person just stares and I think hopes each spoonful doesn't disappear as if naming the experience with their spoon: delicious.

This chocolate mousse is certainly birthday worthy, but I like to carry on the tradition of the modest cook, who just happens to have too many egg whites? Enjoy.

The Modest Chocolate Mousse

6 ounces chocolate (I like to use a mix of dark and semi-sweet)
3 tablespoons cold water
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
5 eggs, separated

1. In a double boiler, melt chocolate. (Be sure to not get any boiling water into your chocolate)
2. Using a wooden spoon, stir chocolate until smooth.
3. Add cold water and blend well, then add sugar and incorporate until smooth.
4. Remove chocolate off boiling water and add vanilla. Be sure to blend well and let chocolate mixture cool slightly, about three minutes.
5. Beat in egg yolks, one at at time, into chocolate mixture. After you add each yolk, stir chocolate until smooth.
6. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites into chocolate. Be sure to do this in batches to not have any streaks of white.
7. Place in ramekins, champagne glasses or heck, even jelly jars would do in the fridge for at least two hours.
8. Serve with fresh whipped cream, fruit, mint leaves or just plain.

Yields about five to six champagne glasses

The Democracy of Bicycles

I wouldn't ever consider myself a political poet. I wouldn't want to be. It's partially what I adore about poetry-- a land that exists as words shyly hugging the left side (no pun here to politics, well, maybe a little) of the page. Sure, there are great political poems, Easter 1916 by Yeats to name a well known example, but I'd like to think it has "stayed alive" in the political poetry archives due to it's sound as sense instead of just sloganed language with political intent. Sometimes shouting is just noise and not words you want to carry in your head or heart.

I used to be much more politically driven, now, I'd rather work on my garden. I'd like to think that the quiet movement of making a tiny plot and home in this world more green is a political stance. My stance is my body bent over pulling weeds and planting arugula, nasturtiums and basil. As if my flag is nothing but the leaves on my sage bush that outlasted a gray Missoula winter. My country is filled with people who consider themselves hardy perennials in a world that wants plastics and perfection. We the hardy, we the greened are imperfect in our becoming. Because that's what nature gives you, it gives you metaphors of becoming. The pear tree outside your window now in bloom will be fruit, the blue birds building a nest will bring flight and the trilliums on the forest floor are now spring's perfect white to summer's green. All become something.

But now I am getting too metaphysical, so let's turn to the poetry of Robert Frost instead. "Nature's first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold." The gold of spring forsythia cannot stay gold but will be the green of summer shade. Maybe even our political shouts of our youth will be our quiet acts of gardening as adults. Maybe most character traits you develop as a young adult, seem to just shift to some other place as you age. So my once political nature to save anything that looked cute and mammalian, has turned into a different focus. Now, I am pro-bike and I pedal.

Really, there are few things in this world that move me like libraries, post offices and public transportation. It's as if regardless of any ism a country holds at least they can all agree on these three. I cannot say our country has a grand example of public transportation systems, yet in our small town of Missoula we do have Bike, Walk, Bus Week. This week, thanks to the good people at The Way to Go Club or http://missoulainmotion.com/ we are a city that cycles, commutes and carpools, or tries to all year long.

Even as I sit here at my desk watching the cool rains of late April, I will ride my bike. I will join the democracy of bicycles and quietly pedal to work. Really, I don't do it for any political purpose as much as I do it to have some quiet before the business and noise. It gives me twenty minutes to breath and pedal to a rhythm to remind myself I am not in a box, that I am becoming something too. Viva La Bicycle!

Enjoy the poem.

To Begin

I wear my seatbelt when I like myself,

my hands at ten and two like the cuckoo

clock in my kitchen which I won’t let coo

or chime since the elf hen inside started

saying shoes. I wanted to shelve it away

with the pencils or ship it to Caracas,

but clocks are endangered there.

I leave my house before the sun finds

the alarm, ride my bike to work and flirt

with cars to nudge me into curbs, alleys or dirt,

so I can start my day face first to the morning

light and ignore people moving in boxes

of metal. I turn up the wren housed in my heart

who warbles from its perch on my desk

and sings with each tick of my pencil.