Backyard Alchemy

Outside, our four(almostfive)-year-old neighbor growls like a dinosaur. He's boldly letting the frostbitten world know he's up and ready to attack before eight a.m. He likes to dash back and forth next to our basement windows and look in, bending slightly at the waist. I always wave and he looks at me curious and puzzled; he waves back to Wesley, who is a boy and has been given the title of "friend." (I do receive dandelion bouquets on occasion and advice about keeping roly-polies in jars, though). When I first met our neighbor, I thought he was closer to seven, but he's just attending preschool and anxious to be released from the confines of walls and borders. His mom fears his wander-lust that leads him out of the front yard and into the adventurous blocks beyond. Once he walked to his grandma's house a few miles away; another time he started toward the cemetary; "I'm not negilgent," his mom says (this is very true), "I just can't keep him close." His wanderlust is endearing, but I am a neighbor. Soon I will be saying the same thing about my own son who will never be so close as he is now.

This morning, in further preparation for "the worst," I imagined how I would tell people (myself) that little Charles Lamb only lived a few hours . I tried to picture what we would do with his dresser filled with folded onesies and socks and receiving blankets, or his rattles and lotions and wipes, or his stroller and carseat and swing and bouncy seat. I tried to imagine what I would do with the empty space within me when my arms remained empty, too. In the middle of this lovely four a.m. reverie, Charles complained and shoved himself on all sides of my belly as if to say, "Oh, come on, Mom! I'm just trying to figure a way out of here!" I'm afraid he'll wander away into eternity without me and I won't recognize him as an adult.

I'm overdramatic. My imagination is much worse than reality.

At least I know that.

My sister's baby boy is due today. The doctor told her she could have another two weeks to wait.

What I really mean to write is that there is a poetry to this living thing. There is a rhythm we don't escape, even the unborn. Some books do not allow much underlining because at a certain point I realize I would underline the entire volume: so it was with Lance Larsen's Backyard Alchemy. His writing makes me want to write, to pound pen to paper and swish fingers over keys. His writing makes me want to read, turning pages the way I blink or breathe. His writing makes me want to cuddle close to all the people I love and whisper the lines aloud: "We have to taste that delicious itch / of air the way the blind sometimes hear light" or "...My love is rain wet / and almost forty-one, and children like seals // have pushed through her cries. / Tired rain, wash us clean."

Yes, Charles will taste the delicious itch of air. He will push through my cries, though the ones he bears (bares) now may be more trying than those awaiting us in five weeks.

Point: read Lance Larsen.
Point: forgive my obsessions, or forgive me for clinging to closely to them.