Alexis Rotella

You Can’t Con a Con

(for Bobby Ray)

I’ve been to the dark side more than once—smuggled drugs into the country on a yacht. I knew a lot of the big players in government—many were drunkards like me. Years in prison turned out to be the best education I ever got. Now the garden is my teacher—she tells me where to plant the corn, the tomatoes, the poppies.

In predawn light
an iris called
Sin City

There’s a sunny spot where the trellised gourds hang. In late summer my girlfriend spreads them on the earth to dry. She later turns them into funeral urns that sell for a pretty penny. Everything she touches turns to beauty—the baskets she weaves, the way she keeps the rooms. Indian blankets on every chair. Rabbit skins on stools to soothe feet that have walked many miles.

Red hibiscus
in her hair, suckled by
a hummingbird

We painted the shack hot pink and blue. It stands out like a sore thumb—but we like it. A former drug buddy owns the place as well as the restaurant next door. We have an agreement: I grow vegetables for his kitchen, and we stay here rent-free—even though he won’t spring for termite control.

We call our home “The Shaman Shack.” It’s a retreat for AA folks and others seeking spiritual support. Sunday morning, people come from all over—for healing. Women on chemo who’ve lost their hair. Men on their last legs trying to make it right with their Maker.

People coming together
just to be 
together

Cancer is a spiritual journey, no matter the kind. Someone donated a huge quartz crystal that hums with good energy. The sage smoke is thick as pea soup on Sunday mornings when my girlfriend and I ring the crystal bowls. A young man joins in with his didgeridoo. Some say they astral travel. And really—who can’t use time away from a body full of knots and aches?

This place is an oasis in a suburban stretch where every house looks like the next. But out back? There’s a tipi nestled among the flower gardens including fruit and nut trees.

The only one left in the county
an old persimmon
still turns heads

Last year, a hurricane blew in a fat red hen who now cuddles with our tomcat under a bench. She lays an egg a day—her way of paying rent.

In a forgotten
pile of brush—
rhapsody of blackbirds

I know I can’t live here forever. I’d be homeless if it weren’t for my buddy. I take it one day at a time. The coffee pot is always on—no telling who’ll drop by. But damn, I wish someone would help in the garden. My rotator cuff is killing me.

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About the Author

Alexis Rotella lives in an apartment with a view of the sky at Whitestone Retirement Community in Greensboro, NC. Her companion is a seventeen-pound ginger cat named Colby. For a year she has been acclimating herself to widowhood.

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