Yesterday I told someone I loved my car. That's not quite true. I really like it -- a lot-- but it's just a machine and I don't love love it. I do think there are some inanimate objects you can love, however. My house, my yard, my piano. Not entirely inanimate either. The house breathes, keeps me warm, cool, cozy, safe. I fear it also moves, being a house built upon sand, after all, in the North Salt Lake hills. I'm watching closely.
The piano resonates with tones I strike, and responds to the most subtle of technique. I have a particular attraction to those 88 black and whites. But I'm oft unfaithful: I find it hard to walk past any piano without touching the keys.
The yard is truly a living, growing thing. Unlike the house and piano, which I own and control, the yard owns me--I am its servant. But it rewards me generously. It amazes me as I watch things grow and change weekly from spring through fall and even throughout the winter. It supplies me with bird song from morning until night and a variety of wild life. Oh yes, like a petulant child, it insists on growing back weeds that I'm sure I just pulled up yesterday. I do think I got some of the Griffin farmer genes after all.
POST HUMUS
Scatter my ashes in my garden
so I can be near my loves.
Say a few honest words, sing a gentle song,
join hands in a cirle of flesh.
Please tell some stories about me
making you laugh. I love to make you laugh.
When I've had time to settle, and green
gathers into buds, remember I love blossoms
bursting in spring. As the season ripens
remember my persistent passion.
And if you come in my garden
on an August afternoon
pluck a bright red globe,
let juice run down your chin and the seeds
stick to your cheek. When I'm dead
I want folks to smile and say..."That Patti,
she sure is some tomato!"
by Patti Tana
From "When I am OLD WOMAN I Shall Wear Purple"
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