You love this mirage, this idea of yourself looking out on the world, when, all the while, the world is within you. And you love the sanctity of what you imagine is your private space, when that same space is outside you. And if what is outside is in, and what is inside is out, where are you, and what are you? Just what becomes of the who of you? […]
Someone says the bright new mushrooms shine like lanterns by the walk. . . . the moon? In Light Of Twenty-six degrees this morning. I wonder what I would do if I were a star? Shine like the rest of them, I suppose. And perhaps be gone by the time my light is seen in this faraway world. Lantern is a word I love. I wonder how old I […]
If I had not known desperation, could I now know calm? What does the house feel, when it’s pelted with cones? If I had not known fear, could I now know love? What does the house dream, when the sun warms its bones? dahlias in the rain bowed heads weak stems she brings them in
He’s kissing a girl who’s been packing peaches, elbow-deep in fuzz. She’s damp with sweat and has tired breath — it’s hot and the hours are long. In the house, the old farmer almost sleeps through lunch. His wife watches through the window — she knows the boy — but of course it’s his parents she really knows. And anyway, it’s not her daughter, the pretty girl from town, just […]
Sleep is a boy fishing on the last day of summer — then school begins. Fishing I am fishing now, in a stream that has followed me down from the big sky at night, muddy and rippled with stars. My shoes are dreaming on a rock, full of fine wet sand. My clothes have begun to doubt me, but my hat is a mile wide, a meadow yawning in […]
It seemed almost rude last night to close the front door while a cricket was singing just outside. And yet a short while later, ready for sleep, I could still hear it, steady and measured, through the adjacent bedroom window. In less than a minute, I could no longer distinguish my heartbeat and breath from its rhythm and song. And I thought, the first and last word in all human […]
We will leave early this morning for another long walk at Silver Falls. But the countryside we will drive through to get there is every bit as beautiful in its own way, and as worth walking, except that the walking would have to be done on roads. And so, that we may see one beautiful place, roads take us through other beautiful places, while keeping us apart from them. And […]
All our then and all our now, caught up in a butterfly migration. August 7, 2019
In his journal, Emerson writes of walking with Hawthorne, talking with Thoreau, Carlyle’s latest book, and Tennyson’s new poems. In mine, I write of you, in terms of my own plain self. And this is our wealth: that we are each a funny blend of science and superstition, of pain, nerve, and luck. And this is our grief — the loss of dear Waldo, Emerson’s five-year-old son. August 4, 2019 […]
Goose Lake is still choked with lilies, but here and there a small patch of water is now visible. The muck slowly recedes, but there’s no shore, no place to put in a canoe, or to cast a line. By all signs, it won’t be that kind of summer. A fallen cottonwood branch lies across the part of the path that leads to the only other place of easy access […]
