A letter on behalf of The Queen

Dear Ms Goddess in Charge of the Meadow of Royals in Heaven;

 

We implore you to accept our Best Friend with all the dignity and grace that she brought to our four-legged world.

 

We ask that you remember her as we do – a light touch to our head when we were confused or anxious, a long ramble in those grey-misted, great green vales when we could no longer make sense of the swirl of the world, when we needed to bury our noses in long swaths of grasses, drink long gullaps from the cold streams, wavery with fish-fry and pollywogs.

 

We want to say that she was required to think about the Big Issues and the Small Details all at once – that she had to preserve not only the dignity of Her Office but help those who came to her to do the same.  She never missed a beat, even when she herself was beat and tired and only wanted to saddle up and ride out and throw sticks, but instead had to gather her pearls and special hat, make sure the correct emblems were packed in those velvet bags and go out in a carriage or coach or special car to greet the people, to help the world feel a little bit better, even in the worst of times. You know as well as any of us that there were both worst times and grand times.

 

In this way she was a True Leader, a person set forward to do more than keep herself intact; she was obliged to keep everyone who looked at her intact and whole too. In this, some days, of course, were better than others.

 

But we, her best buddies, we knew her best and we send her to you with our hearts aching, our furry necks yearning for her touch - but knowing she will be the best you could ever wish for. 

 

Emma, Fell Pony and Muick and Sandy, Corgis.

It's been a minute....

I am so restless now; I can’t settle on much. We are starting to snap back into some semblance of the un-affected life. But somehow we are almost more isolated, as our small little Covid-covens break up, spinning into other streams of existence, work, school, exercise classes, leaving us between worlds, between what used to be and what used to be before that.

 

What I mean is, those relationships formed by the necessity of limited contact during Covid might not work so well as we get back into the flow of going places and doing things, while many of our previous connections have been broken or stretched way too thin to hook up again.

 

I am so restless and yet so stuck. Sitting on the tan sand yesterday afternoon, the grit of beach invading the seams of the swimsuit -- a new one because after two years of neglect, I can’t even find my old ones, which truth be told, probably won’t even fit any more. This beach has a touch of heaven to it, a small cove at the bottom of canyon eroded into the bluff, a canyon edged by tall pines and Douglas fir, full of butterflies and the calls of juncos and bushtits, chickadees, the echo of ravens. Over the narrow bay, the gulls  cry their funny, searing call, then strut along the edge of the wavelets, little martinets commanding your chip-crumbs or the ragged core of your consumed pear by their mere presence of their upright posture, their parade-ground bearing.  

 

The water – it is the water that makes the difference, that creates the spell, the transmutation  – cold, of course, but not so cold as to be impossible. The long narrow finger of this bay marks the San Andreas fault as it rips into the crust of the planet; it is a hinge, a meeting and a long leavetaking of plates, a matrix of tectonics. Here we can feel the fold of our lives, how that past can flip up and across the present like pleats. I may be in the kitchen, folding the batter for blueberry muffins, but I am also on the side of the road, hitch-hiking to Woodstock.

 

I run into the bay water, the same fold of water that serves as a nursery for white sharks. I float, looking up at the serrated edges of the sky, the tops of my world, but the bushy bottoms for the raven, the osprey, the lone bald eagle. 

 

From writing prompts on Wednesday night, August 31, 2022