Maybe I have changed. Clearing the downspouts of birch leaves in a light rain at fifty-three degrees while wearing shorts and short sleeves and being barefoot is something I have never done before. That I felt warm and completely comfortable while doing it is, I think, as good a sign as the early fall rain, which is drenching everything in fine winter style. Fifty-three, of course, is not cold. The […]
Fifty-eight degrees. Standing shirtless on the grass at dawn under a steady rain, face to the sky, I was surprised at how warm I felt. Twenty minutes later, inside, while finishing my shower with the water turned completely to cold, I was surprised again by how much colder the water was coming from the city well and up through the pipes that run under the house. What, in degrees, is […]
Street by street, power is being restored. Last night at nine o’clock, it was thirty-five degrees. This morning at three-thirty, it was forty-five. Yesterday morning, we viewed the destruction around town. The ice storm has closed roads, brought down wires, felled mighty oaks, split cedars, ravaged birches, and crushed cars and rooftops with mossy limbs. In the afternoon, the roar of chainsaws filled the air. They will be running for […]
You will forgive an old man, won’t you, his worn out poems, like shoes, by the door? Twenty-six degrees. An all-night freeze. The early morning sunlight upon the frosted fig leaves is causing them to fall in yellow clumps and bunches, their soft rattle audible through the partly open window. And the living, breathing orchard floor, inches deep with hands and stems, made in timely session by a single tree, […]
Apples, persimmons, and a silent bamboo wind chime, between your mind and mine. And oranges, you reply in kind. And it takes time, we find, to peel December. So Much Like Now When you find this grave in the ragged ground, remember me to Winter. So much like now, it was cold the day I died: cold when a carriage rattled by, cold in bright Missouri, cold in Kansas […]
