Way To Magnolia

I was to go to Albertsons. A sunny day in Seattle for once—day before May. Once the bottle was properly tapped, I opened the door and grabbed the cat. She was to lay with me in the open sun. I had her trained to sit in my lap and anytime her muscles tensed, flexed her claws into my thighs like she was making to get away—I grabbed her, held her close and said things like, hey what are you doing—my tone low, slow and faster near the end. All very complicated anthropological science, but you hear this all the time when people discipline their pets. And it works, too. She sat there sunning herself while I finished the remainder beer and we soaked in the spring sun and intoxicating flowery aroma. Seattle was like this. Drear and drab. Lack of Vitamin D and then, whamo! color. Not just budding branches, sprouting shoots—but red, pink, purple, and blue flowers dancing up and down the city blocks. In the strangest places, you wouldn't expect humans, much less flowers.

I set out. After beer, and sun, and cat. There was a ball game along the main drag—if Magnolia could be said to have a main drag. I lit a cigarette and concentrated on the path in front of me. Girls could be, literally, anywhere. Dravus Street traffic and all the fools coming from and here, to and there, in a heap of anger over the recent pains it took to get here. More so if you've never been here. Ask any random Seattleite, even, where is Magnolia, to which they respond blankly, or at best Shoreline, or Bellevue area, or some other discombobulated response. Magnolia: the true West Seattle has three "ways" of getting to it by way of three bridges.

Take the time as a passenger on your daily commute. The one you do day in, day out, and look around you instead of doing all that other stuff commuters do—brushing teeth, combing hair, applying copious amounts of make-up—getting angry, most of all, at the driver in front of them. You'll see that there are many little places, little nooks or crannies in the city that you did not know, until this moment, existed. Perhaps, they did not exist at all until you witnessed your own life as a passenger. That is why people miss Magnolia. It isn't because it is hidden, obscure, unmarked or otherwise elusive. It's because people in this city are drab, dreary and depressed with rain, admitted or not, and things just miss cataloguing in the mind.

By now, I was down near the fields. A small girl, around 7, asked her father about the green caterpillars on the ground. They were just seeds, dead off the tree above us, but in her mind they were magnificent insects. A carpet laced across the sidewalk. I looked down. I knew I'd seen them before, in Minnesota, but I could not think of where. I looked up at the tree. Looked up at some semblance of where they could have come from. When I looked down to get a better look at the droppings, they were gone, past under my feet as I walked down the path to other reckoning or conclusions. A man ran past me, although, I wished it had been a girl. My cigarette smoke must have bothered him. Not as much as his stink bothered me. Sweat was clearly visible oozing from his neck and all I could think was that he was stinking up the path. What right did he have? I made a few phone calls but they both went to voicemail, whereby, I left assiduously lively messages. Treats, for later when they listen.

On my way out of the grocery store, the woman in front of me was buying several, and I mean several, Lean Cuisine dinners. She looked like a swell lady, short, grey-haired and bulky equally the whole way around, 1.88, she said, I'm gonna buy like ten when I get off work, he said, heck of a deal, one of them said. Equal bulk, top to bottom. She was a very interesting lady and her and the cashier were having a delightfully Midwestern conversation. So candid, yet, guarded. So honest and trustworthy, yet, gossipy and harsh. All of those things were visible and even the two actors looked the part. Both grey and Norwegian. They looked like workers—tough, Iron Range folk. I bought my things and walked out—cut up the lot into the alley behind the store. The Equally Lady drove by, delightful smile imprinted on her face. She kept on through the alley the next block and I forgot about her. I was back on 31st. The path had so many bushes and blooming trees dangling above its surface in front of me that at times it seemed as if the intoxicating aroma of passing by so many lovely smells would make a man crazy, weep, or hungry. I felt all those things and more.

Two blocks from the store, I saw the Equally Lady pull up in her tan Camry. She lived here. Next to the noisy, barking dog's house. Maybe that was her house. There was a moment where I realized how silly it was of her to drive such a short distance. It took me as long to walk from Albertsons to her house as it did for her to get in her car and drive. It didn't matter. I walked by and then I forgot about her.

Pedals underneath one particular tree were pink with conical white bellies. They had floated, all of them, gracefully to the earth. From the start of the day, after night when gentle breezes blow them down, the people in Magnolia trample them, squishing each pedal of its tiny cells. Less intact, they decay faster, emit a powerful intoxicating aroma, leaving a noticeable brown pedal path through the halo of dead. They are still beautiful, symmetrical—as if raindrops, too heavy for them to hold, slowly broke it free of flower restraint. I walked over them. Asserting my part in the path, my impressions. A little further up, I noticed a pedal, very large and conical like the others, intact. I thought it would be fun to drink beer from. Delicately, I picked it up and trudged home.

Oh thanks. I really appreciate the time you took to read it. I know it's a little long for expecting people on a poetry website to dig on it, but thanks for making an effort! Cinematic, eh? Maybe my riches are to be made in Hollywood!