Yesterday’s birds: towhees, chickadees, robins, starlings, scrub-jays, downy woodpeckers, flickers, doves, geese, hummingbirds, crows — and, late in the evening, with my throat feeling a bit dry, two timely swallows. Yesterday’s planting: twenty-one dahlias — twelve in the main garden, three in the “test plot,” and three under the kitchen window where our daughter’s little boys used to dig for treasure. Yesterday’s walk: barefoot in the grass in front of […]
Each addition to this collection of poems, notes, and drawings has been made with the understanding that it could have been the last. This entry is no different. As far as I can tell, I am here now. I seem to be healthy. I ate a small breakfast and took a walk again this morning, filling my lungs with the fresh chilly air. I took a shower. I see now […]
I wonder, is it possible to cultivate a patience so gentle and profound that it outlives the flesh? Or is patience a pond we bathe in, and cannot defile with our death? We were greeted by a friendly, talkative woodpecker yesterday near Goose Lake — a young bird more intent on socializing than carrying on its regular craft and trade. Watching us from a bare trunk not five feet away, […]
Is the early-morning tapping of woodpeckers a form of communication? Is it song?
Is the mind’s ear the source of an echo?
And what of the mind’s eye? Is that where we go when we’re gone?
Canvas 1,176 — March 14, 2018
Anonymous
I see you on a swing in a doorway
between two failing timbers,
caught by an echo
in the black night beyond.
Recently Banned Literature, May 23, 2011
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