Having made the journey from the front yard to the back, beneath the weight of the second story where morning light was filling rooms, I was comfortable with the progress of our adolescent wildflowers. Then, between the backdoor and backfence, light filled me up. The poppies are stubbornly refusing to bloom. Mild flakes of disappointment crawled up my temples. For a moment I considered the preposterous notion of watering the Redwood Tree. There, erect and looming, concentric symmetrics, wheels of blades spiraling over our rental house. Me, corrected, sighing; sharing the embarrassment with the pointed bamboo that have lived partially in the Redwood’s shadow. I decided to step into this shadow. I gazed up into the vortex of leaves. You don’t need tepid municipal sink juice. (But I’ll get some for you, over there beyond the glass. You potted co-dependents that dot the interior landscape, scrubbing and smoothing the nervy corners of brutal Puritan design. You little fuckers, in comparison.) I remember where Dottie scratched your delicate conifer skin, loomer. When she was given a chance to roam wild. Too few moments with that champion, I miss you.

I push on that spot with my imagination from a mile away through this keyboard, where Dottie, me, Redwood, and microbes have a chance encounter on earth in space. I’m reminded of one time I tried striking the Redwood. The way that you do as a martial artist who’s curious about surfaces and transfer. There had been a sharp, uneven slap from the sketched conifer texture, unwilling to participate. Or unnoticeably. More impenetrable than cement, completely full of form. Not the satisfying feedback of leather wrapped compressed textile. There are few living things that are so dense to human body sacks, I suspect.