Yesterday The Good Husband and I spent hours in the garden cleaning, preening, trimming and skimming. We wore our swimsuits and hopped in the pool to cool. Gentle breezes rustled mesquite beans from their branches and clouds spread themselves thinly between the bright desert sun and us. Rain would come. Lovely!

In the Mission Garden I ate several late strawberries, trimmed back the mint (I have more than a dozen varieties), and harvested a lovely cache of figs. FIGS! Now there’s a fruit that’s inspired lots of love. And is it ever revered. Historically, the fig tree’s been considered sacred in all parts of Southwestern Asia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy. And now, of course, in Tucson.

Pliny The Elder, the noted Roman writer and natural philosopher, said “Figs are restorative. They increase the strength of young people, preserve the elderly in better health and make them look younger with fewer wrinkles.”

Bring on the figs!

Figs symbolize abundance, fertility, sweetness. Like a ripe and ready, fecund woman. The most mentioned fruits in the bible, figs also played key roles in ancient tales of love and seduction. Not surprising. Figs are sexy. Consider the words used to describe figs… Fleshy, Luscious, Rosy, Satiny, Smooth, Succulent. You get the picture.

Figs. I love them. Have I made you think twice? If so, take a look at some of mine:

Inspiration:

The Fig

by Gabriela Mistral, as translated from the Spanish by Maria Jacketti

Touch me: it is softness of good satin, and when you open me, what an unexpected rose! Do you not remember some king’s black cloak under which a redness burned?

I bloom inside myself to enjoy myself with an inward gaze, scarcely for a week.

Afterward, the satin opens generously in a great fold of Congolese laughter.

Poets have not know the color of night, nor the figs of Palestine. We are both the most ancient blue, a passionate blue, richly concentrating itself because of its ardor.

I spill my pressed flowers into your hand. I create a deaf meadow for your pleasure. I shower you with the meadow’s bouquet until covering your feet. No. I keep the flowers tied – they make me itch; the resting rose also knows this sensation.

I am also the pulp of the Rose-of-Sharon, bruised.

Allow my praise to be made: I nourished the Greeks, and they have praised me less than Juno, who gave them nothing.

 

Anxiety

Returned to me.

Why?

We had an agreement,

You and I.

We worked it through, we made a deal, I figured you’d be gone.

But no.

Recognizing destination, path and plan ~ you came along.

WTH?

Habit? Memory? Trauma exacted long ago?

Irrelevant!

Damn you and be warned:

You’re unwelcome.

Your tricks and games, old news.

I’m movin’ on no matter how you coax and woo.

I don’t need you.

Get it?

GO.

I AM in control.

Tell me... How do you react to, banish, deal with anxiety?

Share what works, what doesn't, your thoughts on the topic.

An Ode to Valley Fever

Breathe them in

To the lungs

Airborne filaments and spores

In the warm, moist pleura

Spots and spingles form

Then plan

Their next move

 ~

For most

It is mild,

This inner invasion

~It means~

Fever, cough, chills, ache

Perhaps a rough, red rash

~ 

Six months

A year

You’re better

~

For others

Even twenty years later

Fever, weight loss, cough, chest pain

Blood-tinged sputum

Nodules to blame

But you don’t die

~ 

For the vulnerable few

Lung growths, ulcers, abrasions form

Skull, spine and bone lesions, the norm

Knees, ankles, other joints ache

The brain and spinal cord join in

Forsake

~

Recourse?

Rest

Fluconazole

Itraconazole

~But perhaps most important~

Learn the lessons

Do your best

This may be

The final test.

A few years ago, my dear friend died from a mad conflagration of valley fever and lung cancer. This piece emerged from that experience.

For the latest information regarding Coccidioidomycosis, commonly called Valley Fever, click here.

The phone.

Calculate time.

Too early?

Too late?

Tension building in the shoulders.

Bad news?

Tension…in the neck.

Consider

Statistics, probabilities.

…In the tummy.

Know them,

Respect them,

Skirt around them, aware.

…The gut.

Account for each character

In life’s elaborate play.

Anyone missing?

Vulnerable?

Are they all still alive?

Am I ready

If they’re not?

Although sometimes

Gone back to childhood.

Memories and moments

Now dance together,

Creating new realities

For her,

For us.

I am you  – and you are me – and we are she -

Connected by love,

Shared experience

And synaptic inaccuracies.

As she shrinks,

The enormity of her influence

Is more apparent.

But then,

I think we always knew

We were in the presence

Of greatness.

Look here.

You’ll see it.

Epitome.

Female, feminine, defined, real.

Confident.

Strong.

Vibrant.

Brave.

All this,

And only at middle age.

Damn!

Watch.

Watch out.

Jangled.

Rankled.

Out of  sync.

Out of sorts.

Viewing the world

Through lenses of distortion;

Feeling feelings

One cannot explain.

Questioning thoughts, relationships, motives, decisions.

Is this what it’s like to be insane?

How to re-contain?

Maintain?

Stop the pain?

Again?

Tears.

Fears.

Disappointment and Defeat.

Again.

Death beckons,

Seductively offering promises of ease.

Reality?

The odious trials of living it out are too obvious.

Enduring seems impossible, too painful, to him.

He’s near surrender.

Words fail.

Love…encouragement…support…ineffective.

Is there a way

To get him through another day?

Will the phone ring again?

*

Why is hope not injectible?

Why is love not enough?

What’s this?

…

Moderate right neural foraminal stenosis, at C4-C5 and C5-C6

Slight anterolisthesis of C3 on C4, C4 on C5 and C5 on C6

Mild stenosis of the left C3-C4 neural foramen

Multilevel moderate right facet degeneration

Mild reversal of normal cervical lordosis

Mild left facet degeneration at C2-C3

Severe C3-C4 facet degeneration

Cervical-thoracic levocurvature

No compression deformities

Preserved disc height

…

Poetry in Motion.

Limited.

Mine

for

now

.

.

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