 Each morning I mourn my reflection by asking a metaphysical question: Who is this woman watching me wash a crumpled face and brush ragged teeth? Why do I wonder whether I am seeing a doppelganger goose or a transgander? Here’s the Siri-us hitch: I ask my reflection a question and I’m replied by a virtual bitch. “Your face would turn a thousand ships the other direction,” she observes with bemused affection. Some days I’m glad for our mourning conversation, when the image of a disheveled septuagenarian gives me a special dispensation with a yawn, “You will miss me when I’m gone.” What if the one-legged tenant in the upstairs apartment
drops his boot with a thump and there you are staring at the ceiling, waiting, because you never bothered to learn who lives above, below, or about any neighbor, for that matter, and you are waiting for something that’s not going to happen, and you are missing out on meeting a really good person, but no, not you, with your negative expectation and lurid imagination, you insist on reading the worst in the paint’s imperfections, in the shadows and cracks, and you persist in believing doom follows gloom as night follows day and there you are waiting...  The rat-a-tat yap has finally stopped. What set off her terrier alarm? A neighbor who would do me harm? And when I head home late and get a flat at dark on the country road, should a stranger stop, would I take a ride to my abode? I never used to hesitate. Fear is a sensible trait. Nothing is wrong with caution. But age and the news confuse me into thinking the enemy might be you.  “Now we are having beautiful warm windless weather that is very beneficial to me. The sun, a light that for lack of a better word I can only call yellow, bright sulfur yellow, pale lemon gold. How beautiful yellow is!” Vincent Van Gogh Aged faces Bees buzzing in buttercups Cowardice! No, not so. Color of courage in Japan Daffodil’s diseased leaves Egyptian female pharaohs painted in ancient tombs Frogs with yellow bellies hop away and hide Gold the world over How to mark a Heretic Indian merchants Jaundiced skin means yellow fever Yellow Kid journalism Lemons and legal pads Moonlight and marigolds Nazis forced Jews to sew on their sleeves yellow triangles with the star of David Ochre horse painted on a wall at Lascaux Political praxis of Yellow Peril, pineapples; post-it notes Quince Standing in a stunning field of rape singing the “Yellow Rose of Texas,” Sun! star at the center of our solar system, staying stable for another five billion years Taxis, Turmeric, Tonka trucks Urine-stained underwear Visible of all colors--yellow with black--STOP! Wearing a yellow ribbon while waiting for John Wayne Xanthopsia, an eye condition in which objects appear yellow-- why Van Gogh loved yellow so Yellow submarines, where we all live with the Beatles Zinnias in your backyard
 Between me and the clothesline--
a bull snake whose blotches blend with wet dirt and dead leaves. No hiss or fake rattlesnake coil, still-- silly me--I shield myself with a plastic laundry basket. Last summer, I was enthralled by a bull snake in my apple tree. Disguised by the mottled bark, it stretched toward a robin’s nest, and, yes, I couldn’t help but wonder what the heck Eve was thinking. The year before, a pair mated near the garage door, and so much for rural advice, “They eat rats. They eat mice.” I said it twice before the urge took hold to hack them with a rake. Instead, I yelled, “Go get a room at the bullsnake motel!” Even now, there’s an image I cannot erase of the hapless snakes who tainted my space. “And swelled with thoughts/presumptuous…” from The Persians by Aeschylus Some say we, too, in the hands of a whack-the-water man. Ooooops! Did I open a whoop-ass worm can? Ew! Speaking of dog food, Baxter Boo dog clothes online Unicorn Fufu Tutu Iridescent Doggie Dress Rainbow Sequins for only fifty ninety-nine, comes in red, blue and purple, too. Psst! I’m selling Betsy Ross dental floss for real teeth and fake teeth, yessiree. You’re all crazy except me, me, me   Yesterday—the dog and I on the long stretch between Winnemucca and Lovelock-- I fell asleep. Felt my head nod and bob… Awake!-- a moment unaccounted for. There was another moment—thought I left the dog wandering in the sagebrush wandering onto Interstate 80– loved little dog dead in a second. Made it to the place I call home, forced myself to open the curtains, “Didn’t die this time,” I reminded the dog. Poured a glass of wine and said, “Cheers.”
 Virga is a...shaft of precipitation...that evaporates before reaching the ground...making the clouds appear to have a comma attached.” Wikipedia Sometimes the grand Nevada sky is punctuated with virgas and sometimes we are sentenced to read disappointment in every direction when rain fails to reach the ground.  “Thank God for hollyhocks,” the ranch wife said
as she stood by the side of her truck. “They go untended, not like everything else around here.” She glanced at the house, the barn, the cows in the field beyond. “Some say a hollyhock is a large, coarse plant, like the plainest girl at the dance. But their colors are pure, the sturdy stalks stand up to the wind, the seeds easy to give to a friend. What’s best is they are familiar,” she sighed. “When I see hollyhocks, I know I’m home.” |
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AuthorNancy Harris McLelland taught creative writing, composition, and literature for over twenty years and Conducted writing workshops for the Western Folklife Center, Great Basin College , and the Great Basin Writing Project . An Elko County native with a background in ranching. McLelland has presented her "Poems from Tuscarora" Both at daytime and evening events at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko. Her essay, "Border Lands: Cowboy Poetry and the Literary Canon" is in the anthology Cowboy Poetry Matters . Categories |
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