What is age but a human construct – seven or seventy, it’s a matter of how you manage the moments that will multiply into years.  Seven is used 735 times in the Bible, it is considered the foundation of God’s word and is the number of completeness and perfection both spiritually and physically, how can ten times seven not be that and more?  There are seven letters in the numeral system called Roman, and seven colors in the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.  Have I mentioned how much I love indigo: the midnight sky with no stars, the transition space between violet and blue, the smell of myrrh and cinnamon, the taste of ripe grapes on the tongue, the feel of velvet against your naked body.  Indigo is not the color of Libra, the seventh astrological sign, complement to Aries whose color is always red and whose meaning is almost always boundaries (not war, although you might think that). The seventh card of the Tarot is the Chariot which symbolizes the need to focus, reversed it means the inability to see things. Wha tare  the things that you cannot see?

The sea outside my door brings me spiraled shells, spiked shells, horned shells, flat shells.  Like my cat who proudly presents a dead mole at the front door, purring and prancing her pride and love for me, the sea proudly serves up severed turtle heads, half of a dead fish, a welk’s egg case bored through by a worm.  The cat thinks the fish might bear a third look, but doesn’t want to get her paws wet so demurs. I take a conch shell in hand, search inside for its critter which is long gone leaving behind only smooth pink, think of fritters in the islands – the smell of fried seafood, the feel of hot sun, the taste of salt air.  Holding it to my ear I hear words I can’t distinguish before off it wafts on a breeze carrying gulls overhead, tumbling seaweed down below.  Soon there will be waves lapping at the doorstep.  Perhaps I will drown.

Death by drowning, according to my googled research, may take three to four minutes but a person can only struggle on the surface of water from twenty to sixty seconds before submersion.  But that is water.  There are more ways than one to drown.  It is possible on dry land to be overcome by a deluge of paper required to be finished by next morning, no less a task in comparison to spinning straw into gold.  And gold, of course, is the reason for the paper, but not for you, for the corporation which shall remain nameless, one substituting easily for the other when all is said and done.  But on land drowning is never done, it commences daily, promising succor in return for your sacrifice.  You might wish to trade the sheaves of food it puts on your table with what the cat or the sea brings in.

Speaking of sheaves,  we can all sing a round or two of Bringing in the Sheaves while we peruse the words placed just so on this paper.  This is another biblical allusion, telling (but not in tongues) of the harvesting and bundling of many similar or like items – are you familiar with it?  If yes, if all of you are, then that is called a trope, a narrative stereotype which I, if I am a writer, can rely on you, my audience, understanding.  I personally do not know this song but I do like the words I found on-line, “sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows, fearing either clouds nor winter’s chilling breeze,” especially “winter’s chilling breeze” since it is June and what breeze there is feels more like a furnace.  Also because I have sung in the sunshine, and laughed every day and planted sunflowers that are now seven feet tall outside my kitchen window.  One has a morning glory twining up its stem. But that has nothing to do with stemming the tide that is tickling my toes at the bottom of the steps leading to my front door.

Outside my back door, my old back door – my new back door has seven feral felines behind it and a straw bale house for protection from the weather – outside my old back door there was no sea but there was (and is) a pond.  There were seventeen goldfish in the pond twenty-four years ago.  Between turtles and hawks there is only one now.  I feel its loneliness when I visit to clean out the leaves.  What is it like to be the last?  Does it matter if you have the company of frogs?  Can only another carp keep you company?

I can only think that being the last in a wild pond where you have lived your life with brothers and sisters – generations from the original school – is better than a month or a year or even seven years in a bowl and always the only.  As an only adopted child I have consistently added to my family over the years, including my own generations counting humans, horse, cats, dogs, guina pigs, hamsters, parakeets and other eclectic menageries as part of that. Often I wonder if I see my birth mother’s face in my daughter’s, she who looks very much like me. I have learned that blood is not thicker than water, that there are constellations of care that cross all formal boundaries.  Unlike unnamed clusters of stars in the sky, I have it in writing that my original name was Suzanne.  And a story about being a dragon.  You can believe what you will.

They say, I am told, it is said that where there is a will, there is a way – winding though it may be, or perhaps it isn’t by foot at all, but rather by sea, where, according to old maps, there be dragons. That seems perfectly appropriate.  I will take the thermal drafts to sail on any day:  water or wind.  I’ll send you back seven messages, sealed with wax and a secret emblem that will help you decode the contents. Once compiled, you may note there are treasures for any who dare tread the maze of hatch and cross hatch, line and space, symbol and sign.  You will know that you have arrived when you smell coconut and vanilla, hear the splash of water, sight the rainbow in its mist.  You may even see who you really are meant to be, but first you must open your eyes.