"There's something here for you."

"What is it?"

"You'll see."

I walked into the kitchen of La Bonne Crepe and saw the flower. There was no doubt it was from Daddy Bill. No doubt it was skunk cabbage. In the old days I'd go with Daddy on his trips to the coast where he'd teach a night class. I loved setting out on these adventures. I learned about things away from home.

How a fire named the Tillamook Burn had moved across the landscape we drove through. Millions of black spikes had been trees. I imagined the roar of the forest engulfed in flame, burning everything but the road. I felt safe in our car, in the quiet. The road looked like a ribbon crossing the hills.

Eating lunch in a sunny spot on the Wilson River, Daddy told me about a time he had reached under a riverbank, and a muskrat's teeth had caught his finger in a ferocious bite that left a scar. Suddenly our picnic spot was alive with stories.

I first saw the flowers in a dark pocket the windshield wipers opened, like sparks in the slapping rhythm. Skunk cabbage grows where there may have been fences-in marshy lowlands, rain-filled bogs that could talk a fence post into giving up without much of a try. In spring the flowers come up in bright yellow spears, profound and definite shapes, their scent on the border of dangerous, but still sweet somehow.

I took customers' orders to the tune of "Pachelbel's Canon in D," filled water glasses from a silver-plated pitcher, hit the kitchen to post the tickets, and there on the counter in a bar glass was the color of happiness, a sure sign from Daddy Bill. He knew that I'd know and always remember the tender offering friendship is.

Skunk cabbage knows its place in the world. It carries its name in the air: "We're here, let's celebrate!"

Kit Stafford is a dancer and teacher living in Bend, Oregon.
The Tillamook Burn

These mountains have heard God;
they burned for weeks. He spoke
in a tongue of flame from sawmill trash
and you can read His word down to the rock.

In milky rivers the steelhead
butt upstream to spawn
and find a world with depth again,
starting from stillness and water across gray stone.

Inland along the canyons
all night weather smokes
past the deer and the widow makers —
trees too dead to fall till again He speaks,

Mowing the criss-cross trees and the listening peaks.

Copyright 1962, 1998 by the Estate of William Stafford. All rights reserved.