Place Entry 6

The air is chilly, and the scent of water is thick. Silver skies confirm the threat of rain. I like to be outside on sunless days. There are no shadows. Everything is sapped slightly of its pigment; the difference between painting with acrylics and watercolor. The cars at the intersection are as numerous as ever but seem to be moving slower than usual. They too must feel, as I do, that today is a day for reflection rather than action.

Deciduous trees have begun to flower. A few, like the sprawling oak behind me, remain bare of leaves, save the tangles of ivy growing up the trunk. Above me, I hear birds in careful conversation. A quick "kwe-kwe-kwe-kwe-kwe-kwe-kwe," and a longer, "kuhwehh." I don't know anything about bird calls. I see a dark brown shadow fly from a branch. I wonder if he is the responsible party.

Directly across from my perch is a sign welcoming residents to the COLUMBIA CITIHOMES APARTMENTS: AN ANDP & COLUMBIA RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT. It is flanked by perfectly placed lavender and yellow pansies. A wrought iron fence keeps out unwanted visitors and the tumbling foliage of the older side of the street.

I wanted to get out here in the morning, early, to see this place at sunrise. I wanted to but I am not a morning person and never have been. So instead I'm here at midafternoon in the midst of the slower bustling Sunday. The lack of sunshine doesn't upset me; I got a taste of southern summer yesterday as the temperature climbed over 80 degrees. I'll never complain about the heat but, right now, I won't complain about the coolness either.

A couple of brown ants share the curb with me. They seem relaxed. Or maybe lost. I don't see their hill anywhere. Does a lost ant simply start over grain by grain- rebuild and forget? Does an ant know to be lost?

The gray sky sucks the color from the leaves, the birds, the pansies. The rain will come and then the sun and the technicolor world will exist again. The shadows will all be cast and the ants will move faster to avoid the burning rays.

Prompt Entry 6

In front of my mother's house is a 50-foot cottonwood. Its branches have been trimmed away from the ground about seven feet up. From there the limbs splay gracefully, turning slightly upward, toward the sun.

Its trunk is a purposeful hug's width around. It is planted on a small mound five or six feet from the front porch where a great, old pine was thrown from the ground during a windstorm in 1997. That had been the first year my family lived in the home which I now think of as "my mother's house."

I love this tree. When I come home from whatever faraway city I live in, I stop on the way to the door to say hello to the tree. I pat its thickly grooved trunk. My voice raises a half an octave when I speak to it, as speaking to a child or a pet. More than any room in my mother's house, or the house as a totality, the cottonwood is my place. I sit on the ground below it and its roots fit my hips and back perfectly. On warm evenings when my family eats or drinks together, I perch on a chair directly below its shady limbs and bask in the tinkling melody of its spade-shaped leaves. I have, on more than one drunken occasion, cried in the arms of the tree, clung to it in early morning hours, imagined I could feel its lifeblood flowing up from the ground to the tips of its branches, begged it for mercy or good luck or a second chance.

If this seems unnatural, it's because it is. I am overcompensating in the present for past mistakes. I identify too strongly with the tree. This is the nature of abuse.

You see, the tree began its life in the gutter on the south side of the house during the summer of 1999. My mom's then boyfriend plucked it and suggested we plant it in the front yard where the pine had been lost. My brother Jim and I hated her boyfriend and thought every idea he had was worthless. Our father had gone the way of the pine the year before.

So the cottonwood was planted, and the abuse began. It looked like an awkward stick plopped in the center of a pile of earth. "Stupid fucking tree, I hope you fucking die." Jim and I took cruel pleasure in the fact that our mother no longer punished us for swearing, forgiving us the extra anger. We ripped its leaves off and shredded them in front of it. Pathetic thing, it only had nine or ten.

The next summer the boyfriend was gone. This meant that Jim and I could have friends over whenever we wanted, which was often. We sat on the front porch and took pot-shots at the tree. Travis Panizzoli rode his bike over it and took out a third of its branches. It had grown some, but we were still bigger. Anthony McCormick lit a branch on fire. Jim smashed cigarette butts on its trunk. I tore off leaves in handfuls.

"Stupid tree," I leaned over it so my lips nearly touched it and whispered, "You're a waste. No one likes you."

By the following summer, I had lost interest in abusing the tree. Instead, I treated it with the same sneering indifference that my 16-year-old self treated everything and everyone. I didn't bother to look at the tree when I came up the driveway from Sarah and Heather Simms' house every night. It could have been that I was already beginning to feel the shame; I was just too much of a coward to face it.

The tree grew. It grew and grew. So did I, so did Jim. Grew and grew and grew. I read articles about the secret thoughts of plants, about how speaking to a plant makes a difference in the way it matures. Had we harmed the plant forever? Would it have thicker branches, more lustrous leaves, fluffier and more numerous cottonballs if we hadn't treated it so badly those first years?

This is when I began to make amends. This is when I began to cling to the tree.

Have you ever harmed a thing? On accident, you can forgive yourself and take solace in your bad luck/ignorance/lack of control. On purpose, there is no forgiving yourself, only attempts to atone. Today I hug the cottonwood every time I come home, I whisper niceties to strange trees in the new cities I traverse, and I attempt to treat every living thing with respect.

I hope that is enough.

Prompt Entry 5

Lead.

Arsenic.

Mercury. Cadmium.

Selenium, chromium, silver.

Non-point source means you can't point the finger. A little bit of rain collides with a little bit of metal, bears a mobile babe. Babe rolls, crawls and grows. Over, under, into. Compounding, expanding exponentially. Metal unable or unwilling to extricate itself from other metals. This is the most common type of water pollution in this (any)city. Non-point source: we know we don't know exactly where it came from.

I can't get away from water or I won't. I haven't seen a lake since I've been in Atlanta. I haven't seen a river. A creek snakes through newly developed lofts behind the train station. I am a frequent visitor. The water is a murky graygreen. If I focus, I can see the sparkle of heavy metals. I conjecture whereabout those poisons are coming from.

Calcium, iron, nitrogen.

Potassium. Sodium.

Hydrogen.

Oxygen.

This is the great paradox.

Our bodies thump a lovely assemblage of elements. Mostly we are two: hydrogen and oxygen. Mostly we are water. We need others: calcium, iron, nitrogen, potassium, sodium. The problem is that we need them in exact amounts. A human being is a delicate balance. Every red blood cell is surrounded by a membrane whose constitution is virtually the same ratio of salt to water as an ocean. Scientists point to this as evidence that we evolved from the sea. An ocean made solid.

I point to this as evidence that we need to pay attention to the water.

The water.

We use nitrates to fertilize our fields. The rain takes the nitrates to our stream and upsets the water's perfect balance. This kills certain wildlife, causing bacteria to reproduce grossly. Our water becomes bloated with nitrogen, potassium, sodium. Salts. When our blood becomes bloated with salt, our heart chokes and explodes. A heart attack. Think of the land as our heart.

It rained tonight. I was inside so I couldn't taste the drops as they thudded from the sky. It is ok; I will cry tonight at the illness of the Earth. I will taste the sickness I have consumed.

Place Entry 5

11:00 am

the corner at the end of my street (Atlanta, Georgia)

The first week of March and early in the day. It is 65 degrees already and the high, hot sun is freckling my face. I can feel its rays deeply. This southern sun radiates more powerfully in the spring than my Midwestern sun manages all summer. I am getting used to this.

I perch on the northeast curb. This is the safest spot to sit, as a constant stream of cars enters the intersection from the west and turns north. Face south: a road leading into an apartment complex. Face east: a dead end, its finality a cluster of pecan trees and dusty, overgrown grass. Face west: a brand new asphalt road snaking through a glittering new shopping complex. Face north: a neighborhood in the lurch. That's where I live-- a squat little duplex on the northeast side of the street. It is old, brick and has stood stoic through the changes as they've come.

The sun illuminates the dangerous snow of broken glass. It covers much of the street; I suspect the brand new, three-story condos across the street are the culprit. I wonder what got broken to make way for them.

I try to keep an eye out for critters in the red clay and glass. I haven't seen anything yet- not an ant or a palmetto. I wondered about the roaches- if they scuttled their way into town for the promise of garbage and warmth. I haven't seen one yet. Maybe they're hiding. Yellow-brown leaves, vestiges of the fall, still dance across the ground. When I lived in Savannah, Georgia no one raked their leaves. Perhaps they understood the futility of it. I liked to think they left them as an offering to the gods of spring. A brutal winter has destroyed the grass. The patch behind the sidewalk where I sit is urine yellow and brittle as aged bones. I run my fingers across it- it bites at me and swirls dust into the air.

Finally, I notice a brown moth. He is crawling across the ground slowly. I wonder about his species and why he isn't flying. I stand up from the curb and dust myself off. I bid adieu to the meandering moth and head north up the hill to my new home.