Patricia Zylius

 When something catches me —a fine spray from my hose hissing against young kale plants, ash from the fires in the mountains graying the fig leaves — I want to describe, and I start playing with words, right then. I keep a vegetable garden and fruit trees, live near the ocean in one direction and redwood forest in the other. Endless subjects — or starting places — for poems. The subject often turns out to be something different from what I set out to describe. I want to do more than just create a picture, more than offer the music of words. I want to find out what new place those limbs of a redwood tree, each waving in a different pattern, can bring me to. Sometimes there’s a bit of tension when I stare and listen — why not just be in the experience, now, wordless? It’s not a sacrifice, exactly — I give up the purity of simply being for something else, for the joy of making something with words. Of course, the deeper exploration comes later, when the pen is in my hand. It’s the writing and revising that give me a way to dig. 

Often when I’m shoveling compost, or sweating over a weedy bed, I do forget myself. Recognize only when I stop, tired and grubby, how good it has felt to get dirty, how grateful the green things must be to have me give them such attention. How they have blessed me, too.