What's Tony Thinking

Wild Comfort

I am taking a break from the Kavanaugh controversy. The world will no doubt be relieved to know that I am content to let the FBI do its work without further commentary from me.

Meanwhile, I had great session of my writing group, “Writing in the Wild,” on the North Beach of Discovery Park  on Saturday. Here’s one of the pieces I wrote.

The title is borrowed from Kathleen Dean Moore’s collection of essays by the same name. (Titles can’t be copyrighted).

I was then, and am now, in need of the solace of nature.

The prompt I gave the group (and myself) was “write about an experience of/ encounter with the wild . . . ”

Wild Comfort

Our last night in England
we stayed
at a place
I dreaded — an airport hotel.
We had been on the wild Isle of Skye,
roamed ridges of a stormy Lake District,
walked castle walls in Wales . . .

Now, an eleven story box,
both pretentious — “The Britannia” — and tattered,
carbonated with traveler’s anxiety,
soothed by happy hour.
From the adjacent freeway, a steady roar
overhead, planes groaned away.

Feeling trapped,
I went for a walk
and was surprised, not far from the hotel,
by a lush green field, catching late afternoon sun.
I walked its wooded fringe
veering, for no clear reason, to a winding street that ended
at a woods —
dense, green, shadowed.

Two trails disappeared into these woods
I took the one to the right
delighting — just a bit smug — in this unexpected ramble.
When twenty feet ahead
crossing the trail
was a fox — sleek, red, sly —
She looked at me looking at her
then went on, into the undergrowth.

Coming to that point on the trail where she had stood,
I stared into the green
but saw no red,
no fox.
But she, I felt certain, watched me.