Today's prompt was a tough one to fit into my project. But it got my associative mind thinking about how my colleague was talking about Napa once being called, "the breadbasket of the Goldrush" for all of the wheat that was produced in that valley before the grapes were brought in and Napa became famous for wine. I started thinking too, about how growing up in Sonoma County leaves you spoiled by the abundance that is every where. The produce alone can ruin you from being able to live anywhere else and be satisfied. I also started thinking about the idea of weight. What weighs a place down. What weights you to a place. Part of finding out who I was as a writer was coming to terms with how important it was for me to have a relationship with the place I lived because writing about place is such an integral part of my writing process. Finally, driving home from Napa on this beautiful day I couldn't help but notice all of the remnants of the past that surfaced as I drove home: the old Adobe (which was recently almost shut down), the old railroad line of Railroad avenue, the Washoe House on Stony Point, the numerous old farmhouses that stand dilapidated or remodeled. How do we stay "Zen" with the weight of history as it hides and reveals itself in our daily lives. How do we appreciate the abundance of where we are right now?
Day 20: The Weight of Abundance
On days when sun blazes hills awake, when
still damp earth aches dark possibilities,
when crooked teeth of dilapidated
barns, and crumbling stucco of lost missions
hum with stories they cannot forget
I look at my freckled hands, try to find
a cartography for this desire to know
that seems stitched into me, into any
that live where one wakes to a horizon
that is continually blurred by low fog.
Stories are as abundant as the trees
and vines that are continually heavy
with fruit. What to dig up? What is enough?
In a garden so thick with weeds, sustenance
bleeds with what is pressing upon it. So
days slur past, fat and happy, until
the eye sights it driving past, or the hoe
upturns the hidden artifact, revealing
another history or desire buried.
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