Night Scent

Something on the breeze, honeysuckle maybe. A white note at first, with fruity overtones. It must be honeysuckle, as there isn't much blooming on the ridge. Chicory and ragweed in the bottoms, along the road, and there's a small white flower, like a miniature daisy. While I'm on my knees, scraping away crap with my pocketknife, a Park Ranger stops and wonders what the hell I'm doing, he doesn't know what the flower is either but says it looks like a miniature daisy. I'm sure there's an program that allows you to photograph a flower and run it through a data base, but I don't have a phone and he doesn't have any bars. Michael's son was explaining to me that my entire system was crude, and I don't think he was referring to just electronics, he asked me where to pee and I told him outside, but not in the same place twice. When Kim was here he actually did pee on the same plant several times, killing a poison ivy plant that was threatening my back stoop. Nitrogen narcosis. This is where friends step up to the plate. The background smell is rotted leaves, almost animalistic, a little musky. Traveling with my daughters, a motel in Kansas or Nebraska, they'd take a shower after a swim in the pool, and they'd smell wonderful, peach shampoo and avocado body wash, but underneath was always the scent of young girl. Vetiver and new-mown hay. The staff at the pub were attentive and I realized the owner must be there, she was. I collected my free beer, had a bowl of soup, bought a few things at Kroger. There was an old house site, there's no house anymore, that I wanted to check for mushrooms, even though it meant driving around the back way home. The last seven miles, into the forest, I didn't pass another car. The old house site is defined by a couple of ancient apple trees and the usual expanded bed of daffodils, many mushrooms, and I collect enough to make a stew. I braise the jugged hare in butter and wine, salt and pepper, a goodly splash of gin (the juniper goes well) and make a nice gravy. In the best of all possible worlds, there would be biscuits, but it's too warm to start a fire, I do make a pot of pecan rice that is excellent, then have a glass of port and a piece of very serious chocolate, sitting in the dark. It's not raining but water is dripping off the roof.

Fuel cells and water
are the wave of the future.
Bubba says windmills
kill birds, but I have to point
out that plenty of geese
walk into officer assisted
suicide as a matter of course.