Gravel and Rot
There’s a certain type of yearning reserved for sunsets over open fields. These natural places where crickets harmonize with frogs, and chickadees sing the sun down. In the pasture, milkweed makes circles around purple thistle, and grasshoppers sway atop switchgrass. As the heat of the day fades into shadow, strays stretch their tired bones and creep from their hiding places.
If you follow the cats, they’ll take you home to their nests, show you their kittens, and lead you to water.
An orange tom-cat on my street has an ocular condition, his eyes are too big and too wet, and he winks like somebody’s funny uncle. They’re blue, and the pupil is so small you might miss it. My friend said his orbs look like oceanic planets, if you pet his head, he’ll let you dive right in. The first time I met him, after making tender introductions, he led me down the gravel road to a cardboard box tucked between a rusted Chevy and a mulberry tree.
Mulberries are so common here, they’re treated like stubborn weeds. This one, left to grow unchecked, has enveloped orange barbed wire, supporting the fence, even when nearby posts have turned to rot. The bark and flesh of the tree has also wrapped itself around one of these posts, nature’s slow reclamation. I wonder if the stake is made of oak, pine, or even mulberry. Mulberry ain’t much good for fences, grandpa once told me. It grows in knots and spirals, ain’t good for much of anything at all. For now, pale green moss crawls its way up the post and onto the cool bark of the tree, making a soft path for slugs and snails.
The mulberries here would make an excellent tart - if you can ignore the tiny white worms nestled inside each purple fruit. I remember, rural Indiana, six years old, I would pick mulberries from a tree much like this one, hold them up to my eye, and watch as itsy-bitsy fruit fly larva squirm in and out of the berry’s surface. My dad insisted the larva are harmless, but I refused to eat the ones with worms. And they all had worms. So I let the fruits scatter back to the earth.
Perhaps, were I to go back to that pasture now, there may be a ring of small mulberry trees surrounding the one I remember so fondly. Maybe there would be a row of mulberries making their way from the pasture back to that old white house with the rotted porch and broken screen door.
Sometimes, I wish I could go back to when I was as tall as the uncut grass, when summer meant following barn cats through golden fields to trickling streams, and the only rule was to be home before dark.
Children, like birds, spread seeds, paying special attention to bugs and worms.
If you follow the cats, they’ll take you home to their nests, show you their kittens, and lead you to water.
An orange tom-cat on my street has an ocular condition, his eyes are too big and too wet, and he winks like somebody’s funny uncle. They’re blue, and the pupil is so small you might miss it. My friend said his orbs look like oceanic planets, if you pet his head, he’ll let you dive right in. The first time I met him, after making tender introductions, he led me down the gravel road to a cardboard box tucked between a rusted Chevy and a mulberry tree.
Mulberries are so common here, they’re treated like stubborn weeds. This one, left to grow unchecked, has enveloped orange barbed wire, supporting the fence, even when nearby posts have turned to rot. The bark and flesh of the tree has also wrapped itself around one of these posts, nature’s slow reclamation. I wonder if the stake is made of oak, pine, or even mulberry. Mulberry ain’t much good for fences, grandpa once told me. It grows in knots and spirals, ain’t good for much of anything at all. For now, pale green moss crawls its way up the post and onto the cool bark of the tree, making a soft path for slugs and snails.
The mulberries here would make an excellent tart - if you can ignore the tiny white worms nestled inside each purple fruit. I remember, rural Indiana, six years old, I would pick mulberries from a tree much like this one, hold them up to my eye, and watch as itsy-bitsy fruit fly larva squirm in and out of the berry’s surface. My dad insisted the larva are harmless, but I refused to eat the ones with worms. And they all had worms. So I let the fruits scatter back to the earth.
Perhaps, were I to go back to that pasture now, there may be a ring of small mulberry trees surrounding the one I remember so fondly. Maybe there would be a row of mulberries making their way from the pasture back to that old white house with the rotted porch and broken screen door.
Sometimes, I wish I could go back to when I was as tall as the uncut grass, when summer meant following barn cats through golden fields to trickling streams, and the only rule was to be home before dark.
Children, like birds, spread seeds, paying special attention to bugs and worms.
Lee Gardunia is a creative based out of Kirksville Missouri, with a BA in Art--Ceramics. Their work in both 2D, 3D, and written mediums explores themes surrounding environmentalism. Lee draws inspiration from an aesthetic appreciation of nature, and creates work in order to honor the natural world and preserve its transient beauty in a more permanent form. They aim to express human complexity and mood through intuitive and purposeful color placement and attention to detail.