WHERE ELSE COULD I BE?

The too sweet odor of rotting fruit littering the ground beneath the loquat and chinaberry trees is tempered by the just right piquancy of jasmine and honeysuckle blooms. As I turn the compost pile, the fecund excretion of its microbial denizens exudes earthy wafts promising well fed food in the garden and my bowl. The balm of the hen’s poop cushioned on the hay straw lining their coop mixes with the doughy aroma of their feed’s crumble chunks of meal soaked by last night’s sprinkles from the sky. Priest hops into my lap for another head scratching mutual affection session and once again I am amazed at how clean he smells as I rub my face in his long fur.

Grackles and jays squawk at the other end of the scale from the tiny turtledoves’ dulcet cooing, while the chickens run the gamut from gentle stuttered purring to ear splitting announcements of new oval ova arrivals. More mature, two legged or four wheeled arrivals are announced by the thirteen member canine choir’s cacophonic greeting at the gate across Fetchit Drive. The distant clanging of Johnny’s hammering heated iron in his blacksmith’s shop reverberates off the porch wall in competition with the merry gurgle of the fountain fresh pond water in its return cycle down the falls. Muffled now by spring foliage growth, but still too audible, tire treads and combustion cycles move noisy air down the hill from the too close highway. Brazen completely unmuffled roars that make seasoned veterans stop talking and cover their ears pass overhead whenever dragons approach or leave their international nest too close to our east.

Muscles cramp in my calves as I stretch awake in the silken lining of my Christmas gift sleeping bag after a nap demanded by the fatigue of trudging the several miles it takes to supplement my garden’s limited selection at the grocery store. I barely notice my failing hip joint in my normal perusal of my stomping ground as morning dew on long grass dampens shin hairs, zephyrs chill them and the sun heats and dries them in turn, each step of the way, but a shopping trip or climbing to the top of the stairway up the bank from the river reminds me of it all too well. My perception of the contrast in textures and times maximizes as I brush sand from the smooth skin of young Finn’s plump feet with the calloused gnarl of my desiccated, septuagenarian hands.

I can never distinguish imagination from reality in the ill defined realm allotted to the sense of taste both because it is so connected to the savory olfactory and because my prepared meals have been enjoyed from the first pangs of hunger, through the imagining what would be most beneficially pleasing, the smelling of each ingredient before and after its inclusion in the concoction, the determination of its readiness on to the actual eating of them. The cross over continues as I judge the efficacy of the meal’s benefits by the aroma of my farts, as sure an indicator as asparagus in urine.

Opening my eyes, the question is answered. My sixth sense, my mind, is functioning and well satisfied. Seeing is believing. I am here, now.

And now. Amazing.

More creative, for Amy. ;•D