you can’t run away on harvest day 237still on) while everybody else set the big picnic table on our patio with
plates and glasses and all the food in the fridge we’d prepared ahead. The
meat on the rotisserie smelled really good, helping to move our party’s
mindset toward the end stages of the “cooking from scratch” proposition.
Steven brushed the chicken skin with our house- specialty sweet- and-sour
sauce and we uncorked the wine. At dusk we finally sat down to feast on
cold bean salad, sliced tomatoes with basil, blue potato salad, and meat
that had met this day’s dawn by crowing.
We felt tired to our bones but anointed by life in a durable, compan-
ionable way, for at least the present moment. We the living take every step
in tandem with death, naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven,
whether we can see that or not. We bear it by the grace of friendship,
good meals, and if we need them, talking turkey heads.