Monday, May. 03, 2004 @ 1:52 am
Dirtbike Race #1
It smells so good up here. Arid, dusty, fragrant desert shrubs, the sage and the newly sprouting wild onions. I dig one up, out of the dry silty dirt, and peel off the outermost layer. Inside is a soft pungent flesh, wild sweet onion, so moist, how did it pull any water from this parched rainshadow?
My feet glitter from the mica in the dust. Stumps glitter, stones glitter, decieving us, that the dust is beautiful and not just a filth to wipe away.
I bite a little into the onion. In a blink I'm 8 and sitting on the yellow grassy bluff next to Alan on Hornby Island. Insect wings snap and whirr, wind softly whoos through the pines. Puzzle bark. Clusters of pink flowers nod, looking down to their roots where their layered bulb does grow.
We'd suck the onions and watch the tidal pool fill and drain with the tides. We'd paddle the dinghy around or drag kelp dogs across the sandstone until they dried and their leashes snapped, holdfasts held fast in our fists.
Sand castles, gothic castles made with patient practiced handfuls of saturated sand. Eight-year-old architects.
All this from a taste of wild onion.
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