You reached out to me when I was 18, your creeks strung across the valley.
Blue oak. Red bud. Sycamore. Salmon.
I walked over your bridges and my heart spoke an easy "Yes."
Those college days were just a taste, a lick off the top of a Shubert's
Chico Mint melting ice cream cone
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| Humboldt Park, artist: Gregg Payne |
I graduated, my family came
"What a cute town..."
"This is a bubble world..."
"What do people do here, just sit on their porches all day long and socialize?"
Somedays, yes.
You didn't want to let me go and
I resisted too, and then
San Francisco called. There's work there. I had to go.
Your arms rested, warmed by the hot valley sun, your hands dangling in the branches of almond trees, gray squirrels tickling your belly. Your arms are patient arms.
And in between them lies a womb more fertile than any I know on Earth. I came back to you, fell in love 30 miles north in the cold Sacramento River current, and I missed you. The night sky was brighter there, your small-city lights tumbling on a navy blue blanket, dulling the radiance of stars. But in my heart, I longed for the human spirit lights, the Chico community, a tribe more starlit from within as any I've seen on Earth.
Some say there's a giant magnet under Chico.
Years passed and you welcomed me back to a sanctuary home, sycamore limbs cradling my nighttime breath, Little Chico Creek singing prayers around the dinner table.
And I'd stay there, in and out for years, true to my fluttering gypsy soul, tucked in and held by you. Chico. Valley town, soil rich, rice fields in rain land of entrepreneurs giant wind chimes, earth-loving beer makers, MaMuse harmonies, bike touring adventurists. Chico. "Little boy." College town.
Your arms are so rich, and they cannot offer the ocean. Fertile river mud, not sandy salt kissed air. So I left again and frolicked in a crisp ocean way, southern sunny heaven.
And as the mist filled my joyful heart as I slept in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, you held space for newborn Buddhas, one after another, seed by seed soaked in full sun, filling your fields. I could hear their giggles from afar, and so, one day, with no clue why, I came north again.
And until today, I've never known the sound of stillness as it curls up in my lap, purring, soft like silky peach fuzz, eyes like crystal. We blend together beneath this giant wind chime, as summer turns to fall.
Your playmate,
Rio
