Posted by Jean Rukkila on Jun 23, 2011

Downhill dirt roads do focus one’s attention, so as I rounded a curve on a switchback from the lookout this week I easily spotted branches across a narrow stretch ahead. I cinched the parking brake and got out of my truck to clear the way wondering which wind event had broken branches. As I bent to the chunks of pine I saw a message scratched in the dirt....

Posted by Jean Rukkila on May 19, 2011

Operatic trilling? Amplified gargle? That bird’s intention is to be flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal keeping up with Claude Bolling’s jazz on piano. My dreaming melts into the pillow and soon I’m upright wondering at this bird voice steering me away from tea and e-mail, shower and chore. That bird insists I put footsteps on the planet, until I match its burst of...

Posted by Jean Rukkila on Apr 14, 2011

Though one can leave an hour margin to get to missions in Phoenix on time—and you can avoid the rush hours with wise planning—still you don’t know when the system of pavement, exits and speed limits will seize up and there you are behind an idling semi truck, two lanes halted, with no escaping at Cordes Junction because you’re south of that already; you...

Posted by Jean Rukkila on Mar 10, 2011

I see you. You’ve pulled Flag Live out of your book bag and so it is wrinkled where your nursing text, that enormous tome, has crushed both your newspaper and your container of yogurt. And you there: you’ve set the paper down on a ring of leftover latte at your favorite wooden-tabled, street-peeking, or peak-viewing home to seekers of the morning buzz. Or...

Posted by Jean Rukkila on Feb 3, 2011

During the stillness of 3 to 5 a.m. I might be dreaming, I might be whistling through my nose or I might be noting the Big Dipper balanced on its handle outside my bedroom window, followed by nodding at the half moon grinning over the kitchen sink when I get up to make tea. Lately, a recently published memoir by Leslie Marmon Silko keeps me company until...