Oh sure, tell me there is a time for every season, what goes up must come down, what swings left will swing right, but echoes of homilies don’t make a dent in the flushed swirl of sleeplessness I feel at 3 a.m. Too often inside the long hours of a winter night I blink at the dark, staring down shapes I can’t see, dark forms I can’t name. But not this...
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I was just standing on the edge of the stopped again by deer tracks. I like to stand with my feet on deer tracks. Don’t ask me why. Don’t know why. Not a habit, or compulsion, I’m sure. But there I was, out to get air between waves of weather, and I can’t not pause with my new Merrells to stand on sharp, heart-shaped prints in damp ground. Do my toes hear...
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At the back of the head between shoulders and skull there is a stalk of tender plant; it is the rise of spine sturdy enough to hold the sunflower-like head of a body and bendable like a flower twisting toward healing sun. That few inches of neck one can’t see without a mirror, that place with the hairs that stand up with fear, that few inches of neck I...
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“Gently, gently into the trees,” murmurs a small voice on the window sill. “Morning light tickles all of the leaves.” Bear is singing to the dawn as I wake from a dream of a trail in the Grand Canyon, an old friend smiling by a wooden post with mileage on it, my feeling sense of one decade pleasantly knitting to the next. Then I think, the day must be...
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“To eat lambs quarters,” murmurs one friend to another, “pick them when they’re small then add them to your omelet. They are little triangular leaves of surprise.” Surprise like unexpected syllables wafting between tables on a Friday morning. The piquant flavors of overlapping conversations at the coffeehouse can add zest to sipping and nibbling of latté,...
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