Delight is as the flight

Dishes are done with the intelligence of the hands. The eyes are needed very little. This is the reason for the window above the sink. As I work, I watch a squirrel in an elm tree.  Sitting fat and still, he is a little Buddha. It’s easy to imagine, the Buddha’s placid smile and a string of pine nuts circling his neck for prayer beads. He is at peace. He has a street lined with trees for his pleasure. The elms are the grandfathers of the neighborhood, strong grandfathers never bothered by hard winters or seasons of drought.  But a few years back, Dutch elm disease took the life of one them. Now an orange X marked by the city on the trunk marks another's fate. It is diseased. 

One night, we are asked to move our car, and a neighbor, borrowing a few hands and an old red truck, removes the grandfather in a matter of hours. Hours. The squirrel, I imagine, is safe in another tree. Perhaps still sitting silent in contemplation. My daughter, nurturer and protector, needs to understand what has happened and why. She researches Dutch elm disease. She looks for signs in the other elms. Looking over her shoulder, I feel frustrated.  Thinking about the root system of the Grandfathers, it seems complicated and a little hopeless. But I lack belief in the mystical. My daughter consults her book of fairies. She writes out this wish, “I wish that Dutch elm disease was gone. Elm Tree Fairy.” She has done her part. She has given the name of the disease to the tree fairy. It is his work to do the rest. “Fairies do what they can. They can’t fix everything,“ she says.

Delight is as the flight

by Emily Dickinson

Delight is as the flight --
Or in the Ratio of it,
As the Schools would say --
The Rainbow's way --
A Skein
Flung colored, after Rain,
Would suit as bright,
Except that flight
Were Aliment --

"If it would last"
I asked the East,
When that Bent Stripe
Struck up my childish
Firmament --
And I, for glee,
Took Rainbows, as the common way,
And empty Skies
The Eccentricity --

And so with Lives --
And so with Butterflies --
Seen magic -- through the fright
That they will cheat the sight --
And Dower latitudes far on --
Some sudden morn --
Our portion -- in the fashion --
Done --