In the parking lot, just as we were setting out on our hike, a young woman said to me, “You look like Gandalf. All you need is the staff.” Her friends all smiled. And when I said, “I’ve heard that before,” they all laughed, and smiled some more. At the falls I thought, How can we not be friends? And the ferns bowed their heads.
It can happen any time — one instant you’re in the warm-water wash, and the next you’re a sheet on the line. four hands two cups of tea table a dream pot a bouquet memory For Robert, Mark, and Stanley, June 29, 2019
We’ve heard a number of times that a solitary blueberry bush won’t produce fruit on its own, that at least one other must be growing and blooming nearby to ensure pollination. And yet we have one plant and it produces fruit, and the nearest others that we’re aware of are hundreds of feet away at a house one street to the south and two houses to the west, with structures, […]
Late yesterday afternoon, a thunderstorm came to call. Naturally, I opened the door and let her in. One by one and all at once, she explored the dim gray rooms. And now, where she’s been is where I am, and where she is is where I will be, soon. Ghost frames, windows, walls. Leave them up, or take them down. Shake out the linen and the quilts. June 27, 2019
My father always said that no one taught him to swim, that he simply jumped into the wide mossy ditch with all the other boys and learned then and there on his own. He did not say he had already learned by watching, while dancing naked with glee on the bank in the hot summer sun. Some of the same vineyards that were there in his childhood were there in […]
Canvas 1,236 — June 23, 2019
Why Noah Drank
He still heard them
scratching,
pleading,
beating
on the ark.
Songs and Letters, June 18, 2008
A soft lead pencil, a fingertip — the brush a mind,
the mind a memory, memory a fallen flower.
Canvas 565 — June 28, 2015
My secret today is a passage I read very early this morning. Or is it the moon, a day past full, that lit the dark night of your longing? June 19, 2019 If It’s a Heart You’re Looking For If it’s a heart you’re looking for, the child cried, take mine. I’ll grow another, and a better, and a bigger. Then the child died. And the child’s words came […]
The towhees around our house are quite friendly. Not only do they not avoid me, some seem downright eager for conversation. Within just a few feet, they stop and look at me, then hop about in the ferns and moss and rhododendrons without wariness or alarm. Late in the afternoon two days ago, while I was watering the hostas not far from the birdbath, a male with beautiful markings alternated […]
The art of making it rain, I learned from my father. That I am here to explain, I learned from my mother. July Rain Dying is such old work — I settle the dust in our yard with a hose. Poems, Slightly Used, July 5, 2009
