September Occupations

Would I want to be a gardener this time of year, my rakes poking—dare I say rakishly?—out of the back of my old turquoise pick-up truck, spending the day in hilly orchards out back of some fancy mansion off Arastradero, Fremont, one of those streets with the name of a Spanish explorer or a native tree, coaxing from dry summer's-end grasses ripe fallen fruit?

Or the man who sells rotisserie chickens at Sunday's farmers market, with savory chicken juices dripping down onto the bed of potatoes roasting and browning too, his shears neatly cutting quarters and halves, for supper, early lunch, crisp skin slathered with herbs?

Or maybe the vice-chancellor of some far northern university, sitting in my wood-panelled study with its tiny ancient panes of glass, dipping a ginger biscuit in my morning Earl Grey tea, readying mentally for the new students to come?

Or like my father, back in Yellowstone, watching for fires from a lonely lookout, high above the expansive forests of evergreen, with lots of time alone to write of human foibles on a Smith-Corona with a broken letter "r"?

Or currying the feathered stockings of a Clydesdale in a Pennsylvania barn, picking stones calmly out of one heavy hoof?


image: Paul Gauguin, The Harvest, or Man Picking Fruit from a Tree, Hermitage Museum