sitting on the redwood deck in a split of light and shadow under the houses eave  smoking  passively listening to freeway traffic droning in the valley below gratefully hidden behind reefs of treetops interspersed by coloured shingles and tiled house roofs

a minute bug buzzing

somewhere unseen blackbirds peppered the air with their caws

his outdoor cat asleep near his foot  its chin still matted with slights of gopher gore

Bigfoot slept quietly secure in his stealth and lethalness  occasionally spreading the toes on his hindlegs  his claws extending then retracting

reminding him as he smoked of Bigfoots quiet violence he mete to survive

beside him in the corner was a large crock  inside it a collection of femurbones on end which rose out like beheaded sunflowers and a deer spine held intact by jerked remnant meat and sinew

he was writing his granddaughters

he wrote them of underground elephants that in lived his yard and feared a large hawk that took its nest in an old redwood on an undeveloped tract of land beyond his fence  the elephants exposed only their trunks not that he ever saw as they sought the peanuts he tossed or clear water from shallow crocks he filled for them  he wrote to them of hummingpigs who somehow found their way inside the house and how he was keeping the sliding glass door open yawning wide onto the deck hopeful the outofdoors would beckon them to it

maybe these were things other grandparents didnt write their grandchildren about

but he did

he did because he was able to write because he won in Vietnamese and Laotian jungles rice paddies and twice out of tunnels  birthed again into sunlight and humidity from their subterranean horror and long trembling disquiet

he didnt understand  but learned  the horrid rioting nightmares that stomped the litter around him incountry could exist without the conduit of sleep to invoke or parlay them

he didnt know then he have granddaughters

Hell he didnt know hed have children

too steeped in-the-moment then

always in-the-moment then . . .

                         . . . the hawk cried . . .

he understood her lyrics

behind him apricot trees rustle in a sudden breeze  his fig Iggy growing the wisteria that his daughter had given him seeds from hers growing in terracotta pots in mad mulch he devised from vegetable matter coffee grounds eggshells anything he thought might invigorate the retarded California soil

so very unlike the Midwestern loam he dug in as a boy

it dug easily

his grandmother told him dinosaur bones were in the backyard waiting for him to unearth them

which he never found

which he sought badly in deep hole after deep hole

then had to refill before evening because they couldnt have someone hurt themselves falling into one

he hadnt found bones

Yet

                     not that he would stop looking or wouldnt provoke his granddaughters Innocence

1344,  Sunday,  3  4. 16

1354,  Twosday,  5  4. 16