I threaded my way out of Doney Park along dusty roads lined with lush patches of feral rye grass heavy with seed heads. The trim coopers hawk watched from its perch above on the phone wire for the mice gathering for the harvest. Plump prairie dogs stood at alert as I passed. They are too big for the coopers hawk to manage, but red tails and northern...
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April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. – From The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot If you were to sit on the small limestone hill in back of my childhood home on an April morn...
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“There’s a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.” – Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree I’m doing a ride along with Emma Kate, my eldest granddaughter, as we shop for dinner supplies in sleepy San Felipe. She’s very focused on the task at hand. She has had her learner’s permit for about a week and we’ve planned some serious windshield time...
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Follow me down a dirt road bordered by barbed wire fences under a 1950s blue sky. My feet are bare and I’m shirtless and I sing with great feeling, “Where have all the flowers gone long time passing? Where have all the flowers gone long time ago?” A deep ravine cuts across the widow Blanton’s pecan grove and goes under the farm road by our mailbox. In the...
Read MoreThere was a time after the Civil War when a person might leave the country on short order with no explanation. Folks would often say they had “Gone to Texas.” When my grandfather left Crane Creek, Ill. he did go to Texas. I feel as though 2013 grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and shook me like a terrier shakes a rat. Health problems and issues beyond...
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