Mnemonic by Theresa Kishkan

them alluding to the moment when a young girl might find Eros on her shoulder, rather than the harmless boy with whom she thought she was playing. I recognize that moment in myself — a late bloomer, sitting by the sea with my book. Two men approaching me, an old man and his son, and I swear I never saw them coming. Wind filled with the fragrance of orange blossom and basil, lamb roasting in a nearby taverna . . . When Agamemnon took my hand, I knew what was inevitable. If the olive groves didn’t exist / I would have invented them .

    Return flows calmly
    Forward and you follow
    Feigning indifference but pulling
    The rope to a deserted myrtle cove
    Not missing an olive tree
    Oh sea
    You wake and everything renews!
    â€” Odysseas Elytis, Eros, Eros, Eros: Selected and Last Poems
    I have a bottle of Cretan olive oil that tastes of those months so long ago. Drizzled over tomatoes and white cheese, it has the power to transport me for a moment to those trees, bathed in sea air, nets spread under them to catch their bitter fruit. Angela is there, Yianni nearby, filling the donkey’s panniers. Beautiful Eleni dreams of Demitreos while we finish our lunch.
    Transported back to the grove where I lay with Agamemnon, a girl not ready for children herself, though eager for his body on mine, his calloused hands lingering a little too long on my buttocks. I renewed myself over and over in the clear sea and once saw a dolphin swimming so close I could touch it. Could have followed in its wake.
    The young woman with Eros on her shoulder looks up to see the god, her cheek against his soft belly. I imagine her warm breath, the anticipation in her throat as he points to where they’re going. On that bus from Herakleion, I watched the hills and villages of the island from the window, “little churches grazing / grass before the air,” 6 yearning to know their secret histories. I drew the goddesses, hoped for their strength, and all these years later, I still recall the smell of myrtle and the sight of olive trees rooted so deeply that it was unimaginable they would ever fall. If I close my eyes, I can still hear their leaves rustling.

Thuja plicata
    Nest Boxes

    We must first look for simplicity in houses with many rooms.
    â€” Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
    I grew up with cedars. To some degree they defined the way I apprehended space and time. The ones I remember best were at Goldstream Provincial Park. Huge and shaggy, they grew near the river where I went to look at spawning salmon each fall and returned in spring to look at the fry darting through the clear water. A trail meandered through the cedars to a salt marsh and the estuary of the Goldstream River. The park was densely green. In spring, the smell of black cottonwood leaves unfurling was heady, their resins scenting the entire area. Moss-hung bigleaf maples and their honeyed blossoms were alive with warblers — orange-crowned; yellow-rumped; black-throated grey; Townsend’s; MacGillivray’s; and Wilson’s. I remember it was a good place to see trilliums and the beautiful shooting stars with their swept-back magenta petals. There were also skunk cabbages in the low damp areas. Occasionally, I saw bears. In fall they feasted on the salmon, and in early spring, newly awake, they ate bright green leaves, their scats glowing with chlorophyll.
    The cedar roots ran along the trails like mountains on a relief map, emphasizing the verticality of the landscape. The trees themselves, or at least the ancient ones the park was known for, were heavily buttressed at the base. Their trunks were fluted and ridged, the bark coming away in places. It was not difficult to imagine oneself in a cathedral, one hung over with a ceiling of blue or cloudy grey, punctuated with birds. In the high canopy, waxwings and evening grosbeaks fed on seed cones and insects; fall and winter, scores of bald eagles feasted on salmon and surveyed the world from the