City Girl

I have an uneasy alliance with my current environment.  If you had asked me seven years ago if I would feel at home in a rural climate, I would have scoffed.  I did that once; and often have remarked that I lived in Arkansas for longer than most people serve in Missouri on a class C felony.  With time off for good behavior, I spent the last bit of my sentence in the semi-urban environment of Fayetteville, which made the experience tolerable.  Bright lights, big(gish) city.

Yet here I dwell, venturing onto highways only now and again.  Mostly I see the levee roads which flank the curves of the San Joaquin.  Mornings find me on my porch, straining to discern the strange noises of unfamiliar birds.  Pots of succulents thrive in the temperate air.  I sit outside eight or nine months of the year, happily not shoveling snow or spreading salt for ice.

I like the cool of late February, when the rains have passed but the geese have not yet left.  I slow my car to snap a photo now and then, wondering what field will next give them berth.  I growl at the hunters.  When the distant din of an approaching flock grows louder over head, I rush to the clearing and stand with upturned face, not moving until the whole group of them fades from sight and hearing.

From time to time, I cross the  Bay Bridge and join the stream of cars on one of the interstates on the peninsula.   When my business in the city concludes, I find a cafe and sit with a more intricate meal than I would make for myself.  My head tilts as I strain to eavesdrop on the nearby chatter.  The conversations swell around me.  Passing cars slow for bicycles and the servers skirt around strollers.  No one speaks to me, but it’s easy to feel like part of the hubbub.  

Often I spend the night.  I try to avoid traveling in the direction of rush hour; and overnight lodging gives me time to drive the north way home.  I mingle with the tourists in the headleads, angling for a perfect shot of the Golden Gate bridge and the boats headed to sea.  A moment comes when it’s time to leave.  I ease my car back to the Delta, and surrender to its soft surroundings.  

Tonight I stood under a star-lit sky for just a few moments.  The low-slung moon had not yet made its arc to the west.  Wispy clouds drifted across the heavens. Coyotes raised their jagged howls in the stand of trees to the north.  The lure of city life has never eased its grip on my soul, where I split sixty years between my native St. Louis and my adopted Kansas City.  But the sweet scent of a Delta spring might melt my urban edge before too long.  Today I put the 2024 sticker on my license plate, peeling away four years before it.  I seem to have moved to the country.  Whether I will thrive here remains to be seen.

It’s the twelfth day of the one-hundred and tenth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

From The North , by Sara Teasdale

The northern woods are delicately sweet,
The lake is folded softly by the shore,
But I am restless for the subway’s roar,
The thunder and the hurrying of feet.
I try to sleep, but still my eyelids beat
Against the image of the tower that bore
Me high aloft, as if through heaven’s door
I watched the world from God’s unshaken seat.
I would go back and breathe with quickened sense
The tunnel’s strong hot breath of powdered steel;
But at the ferries I should leave the tense
Dark air behind, and I should mount and be
One among many who are thrilled to feel
The first keen sea-breath from the open sea.

Thank you for reading my blog.  If you have not yet purchased my book and wish to do so, February will be a good month as it’s the first month in my new campaign to raise money for worthy causes.  A percentage of all sales for the rest of 2023 will be donated to nonprofits, with a different charity chosen each month. 

Check out my website to learn about this month’s cause

If you have purchased my book, please consider visiting my shop and leaving a review. 

Thank you. 

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