The poet who worries about not being read forgets one thing: his face accompanies him everywhere. moonlight on the vine and the sweet grapes left behind by that old raccoon . Old Grandpa Moon The whole great countryside was asleep. The night was clear and cold, and the stars were winking above the farmhouses and fields. But inside an old stone cottage, there was one little boy who could not […]
Life is a dream to one, a harsh reality to another; a field of flowers, a prison yard. And here is one of the guards, who thinks it is both, watching a butterfly as it passes over the wall. The guard is killed in an accident on the way home. Somehow, he remembers it all. There are flowers at his funeral. They are in bunches and rows, and they remind […]
A bumblebee asleep on a flower dreams of the last time he danced. August 9, 2020 Bouquet Dahlia buds every which way all pointing homeward and then you say here my love Recently Banned Literature, September 26, 2016 [ 833 ]
A few years ago we brought home a stained-glass birdbath to hang in the backyard. It’s shallow and about the size of a small dinner plate, and though it has since become somewhat discolored, it’s still pretty with the light shining through it and onto the ivy below. I keep it full and fresh through the warm part of the year, then take it down late in the fall. Whenever […]
A profusion of Queen Anne’s Lace along both sides of the road, offset with patches of tall yellow flowers in bloom — whatever their name, or names, they are the same we see on our walks by the river, and which the bees love. In this gentle-warm atmosphere, one might think, or perhaps only wish, that the railroad tracks’ sole purpose is the transporting of dreams. From north to south […]
I moved two tiny oak-sprouts from the garden into clay pots today. One was growing next to the six-foot redwood stake at the end of a tomato row; the other was near the base of our vine. For now I’m calling them the vineyard oak and the tomato oak, the latter at the risk of a little clumsiness for the double-o vowels. The main roots on both were surprisingly deep. […]
I know someone who has a beautiful garden, with a barn, a path, many squirrels, and a broom. In the garden, she moves rocks around. And the rocks respond: they summon light and shade, night, rain, snow; and they hold each beyond the winking lives of them. I do the same with small smooth river stones. Today, near our jade plants, at the east end of the flowerbed by the […]
The language of Henry James in A Small Boy and Others is a softly spoken dream that gently begs the use of the reader’s own tongue. The dream is in color; it has no corners or edges or sides; it is more like the distance one travels between a robin’s breast and a fully ripe strawberry — the kind of journey a child makes many times each day — even […]
The grapes are just beginning to bloom. The canes on one side have climbed to the roof. On the other, they have found inspiration and support in the apricot tree. And the apricot, in her grace and charm, returns blush for blush. Nationalism, patriotism, and pride are coins — certainty on one side, violence on the other. May humans someday learn to pay their way with loaves, poems, and rose […]
Seventeen years — hyacinths are there now, shaded by a rapidly growing volunteer cedar. My mother is gone. We live in her house. Wild Carrots It just occurred to me that wild carrots have sprouted only once on the slope near the sidewalk in front of my mother’s house. That was about three years ago. My sons and I noticed them while working in the area. The roots were […]
