When the oak tree fell last December, it crushed my daughter’s car and robbed the potato vine of its fence.
The unsupported lianas have been heaped at the base of the oak tree’s stump ever since — a gigantic ball of brown twine with a few green threads stretched over the top. We cut and stacked the tree, hauled away the broken fence boards, had the dead car carted off. The vine-blob needed care, too, but being a durable plant that grows with vigorous, weed-like abandon, it didn’t demand my attention, and so, got none.
Till today. Today I noticed happy new potato vine tendrils reaching straight up from the yellowed vine-branch trap that’s been catching dusty, dead leaves for nine months. It didn’t strike me as an omen of rebirth. I never imagined the potato vine was dead, for one thing. For another, the tiny fringe of green wasn’t verdant enough to counterbalance Death’s scythe that cut off my uncle’s life only last Thursday, that yesterday cast a shadow of grief over my visit with one friend, a shadow of fear over my visit with another. Yeah. New green is great, but sprouting from a massive potato vine tumbleweed… not so good. I started hacking away at it.
The lizard skins were hidden inside like white quartz crystals inside a stone. The first was just a wisp; I mistook it for a tiny snakeskin. The next had a bud where a tiny leg had been — it was lizard, but utterly dry, ready to crumble to flakes, to powder. Realizing the bulbous vine-mound was home and cover for a wild creature and that I was destroying it gave me pause. But my yard is large and wholly un-cared for; it offers a gazillion hiding places for a lizard in flight, and the vine was begging for more.
Three times the charm… and a fourth… then the five-fold magic — the most gorgeous, most complete lizard skin of all gracing the inmost chamber of dry, brown vines, still a bit moist, a bit soft, a bit flexible to the touch. Waiting for me. For us. A gift. An omen for the Equinox, and so much sweeter than the last omens I’d found.
With the same gentle hand-cage I use to catch moths and carry them outside, I carried the lizard skins inside the house and set them on the cold iron of my wood burning stove. White and weightless as gossamer, brittle ghosts of the year grace my hearth with the blessings of life renewed.
Equinox Eve, Waning Hazel Moon
Silently, we made our way back to the car, tracing the shifting shoreline of Limantour beach, our words spent from shouting through the wind. Thunderous waves held the bass rhythm, our feet matching its mesmerizing relentless beat.
I nearly stumbled on it. The gull’s body stretched across our path like a rumpled blanket, unkempt feather spikes punctuating the lifeless disarray. Our feet lost the rhythm, ripples encircling our ankles. Wind and waves never paused or hesitated, steadily carving new boundaries to its fluctuating frontier.
“It’s dead…” I mumbled.
On the way out, I had barely noted the gulls. Only a delicate memory remained. Its careening dip, skimming over the distant rows of rising waves. No trace of its recent plaintive call, though it echoed through me.
“Not dead actually,” she countered. “It’s just a shell. The bird has flown away.”