As sure is pure is sour honey. As fine as grape is wine. As must is dust is dust as fine. As ash as flash is light to pass. As red as rose and ink is pose. As rain above is love below. As if as all one needs to know. As mine and yours as time. . [ 1753 ]
A sailor on my mother’s hip, sailing in the mother ship, through the kitchen, down the hall — I was that many years old. Now she’s gone — or so I’m told. She didn’t like our old blue boat. I remember once her calling it an egg crate. I loved the term. A faded wooden vessel twelve feet long, with bright-white eggs several deep packed in tightly all around, and […]
Was I awake, or asleep? Was I there, or somewhere else? Banish the word or and the answer is clear: there need be no answer. That, in its own simple, strange way, is the story of my life. My grandfather, emerging from the sycamore shade on the south end of his house, barefoot and carrying a shotgun in one hand and the bloody remains of a robin in the other, […]
Concord — harmony; a grape; a town; Emerson; Thoreau; all that’s forgotten, but not unknown. * Negativity: the great pandemic. Yet the cure is instantaneous, and starts with yourself. * How strange, being a member of a species smart enough to kill itself. And here is our mother, gently whispering over us, Live, and we think her voice is only the sound of the waves, the wind in the trees. […]
Hardly a grape — a few strands of pearls ’neath the canopy, kiss’d by dew, warm’d by fate. . [ 1540 ]
Late yesterday evening a very active thunderstorm passed through this part of the valley, moving northwest from the Cascades, bringing with it a spectacular display of lightning and enough thunder to wake the dead. And yet somehow, I fell asleep before it was over — but not before I heard the music of heavy rain landing on the roof and on the plants outside. That, and being generally exhausted from […]
The movement of birds, leaves, and insects; the changing patterns of light and shade; clouds; a walker passing by; all accompanied by subtle changes in humidity and temperature — these are the things we miss when we stay indoors and focus for too long on books and screens. Not only do we miss them, we miss the naturally beneficial medicine of our physical engagement and response to random stimuli, our […]
A couple of mornings ago I dug up the garden space. It’s been a very cool, wet April, one of about half a dozen of the coolest and wettest on record. The soil is in wonderful condition, a joyful fact confirmed by an abundance of fat, healthy worms. With luck, despite a continued chance of rain in the forecast, we’ll be able to plant a few things this week or […]
Yesterday morning we dug the dahlias, and in the afternoon I manured the ground for planting next spring. Fluffed and raised from digging, the space looks like a new grave. This morning, the tubers having been cleaned, separated into smaller clumps, and dried, we tucked them away in peat moss for their winter nap in the garage. The apricot tree is bare and fruit buds for next year’s crop are […]
This morning I finished Edward O. Wilson’s Naturalist. After lunch I read in Emerson’s journal about the death of his little boy, Waldo. Two months ago, I ordered Library of America’s forthcoming two-volume edition, Molière: The Complete Richard Wilbur Translations. Today I removed the plants from the pots, barrels, and planters behind the house. I also cleared the gutters, which were full to the brim with birch leaves and fir […]
William Michaelian 