November—fall’s end and winter’s entry. And some years, election month. It’s been particularly hard recently to remember that we are not the Blue-and-Red States of America, but the UNITED States of America.
Seasons
The hills are green again,
After summer’s dry brown brittleness.
Rain soaks deep to the roots
Of dormant shrubs and grasses.
Roots swell, the grass sprouts green,
Sap flows upwards in trees,
Pushing out tender new leaves on koa and keawe.
Winter in Hawaii.
In the Washington Cascades,
Green leaves turned yellow, then brown.
And fell away
From dark skeletal branches
Bristling upward against a low gray sky.
The somber winter tones
Await their covering of white snow.
Only the warm touch of distant spring
Will waken their color.
The same month–
Yet in one place life quickens,
While in the other it slows.
If a season can have several meanings
Can’t it be so with other things?
Sand Crabs
I’ve never seen a live one there.
Just holes they dig along the watermark.
Big holes with high heaps of sand piled seaward,
And small ones with sand out spread fan-shaped and low.
Do small hole-diggers ever get to pile up heaps?
And did the big ones ever spread their sand?
Why the different styles of digging?
It’s the same beach.
The Long and The Short of It 
Hi Yi: Happy Thanksgiving!
Brought back memories of our family visiting relatives in Seattle during August and going to a beach to dig for geoducks. My husband taught our kids to look for bubbles in the sand and then to insert a long metal tube quickly to bring up the creature. Sad to say all the second generation and spouses of his family are long gone. and there’s no one left of my generation living in Seattle. Both my husband’s father and my father emigrated to Seattle in 1882 and 1884 respectively; I’m a living fossil.
Keep well, Cheers, Emma
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