Autumn came, at first, like a man too fierce to get old, huffing and fuming like his leaf blower, hurrying hot wind, unsettled as a hurricane in the trees until, one afternoon, the last leaf fell, was raked, put away, and he settled into something long, cold, and sweeter.
I've learned he is not like the moon, thumb-printed by shadow one night, then full and yellow as a harvest, then gone altogether on the thirteenth of November. He himself cannot be tempted or tilted or touched by the shadows cast by something bigger, because he himself is that Sun, and we are the thing … Continue reading Equinox
One of the main characters in Wendell Berry’s novel, Jayber Crow, is the river itself, which moves through the story like Jayber does, picking things up as it goes, sometimes setting them down again. The river is always changing---sometimes fat and angry, “as if the mountains had melted and were flowing to the sea.” In … Continue reading Everywhere the River Goes
In response to my Papa Larry's poem: "Just One More Time" Remember what Eliot wrote, that “What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present” And so your “have-beens” of driftwood fires near the sea Are, dear Papa, my present. Might I remind you-- Time is like the … Continue reading Always Present
May you wake to the sun that wakes the bees in their boxes and by which you can see your work and spot the queen laying her eggs in golden wombs of light. May you hear the hum of all twenty-nine colonies and may it harmonize with the song of the robins and the breeze … Continue reading For the Beekeeper
One Sunday morning last summer, I came around the corner to the coffee pot to find Sammy and Mr. Bill looking befuddled. When Sam saw me, she said the words squash bugs, and at once, I understood. Any gardener in July would. “My zucchini plants were beautiful,” she said, “and just like that--- gone.” “I … Continue reading The Mortification of Squash Bugs
The pond shrinks this time of year, when at high noon, the sun brings all the water scraping away from the muddy banks and leaves them to crack under the sun. Papa Jay uses the drought season to find the holes where the pond leaks, and he has done so for many years. A leak … Continue reading But the Sea is Not Full
“Today is the longest day of the year,” Mom would say one evening late in June, then shoo us out the back door to drink up every last drop of light, because, she said, the evenings would only be getting shorter from now till December. So I’d lie over the swing after dinner, brushing my … Continue reading The Longest Day of Light
There were many things I did not know about Helen McCallie, but none of them surprise me. For one, I didn’t know she had hiked across Central Africa as a single woman in the sixties. I didn’t know she played classical piano, or that she attended the opera--- though I remember how her laugh sounded … Continue reading Goodbye, Helen
Aspen trees grow on the mountains out West in light, shining forests, because they are knit underground by a root system. Each tree sends out shoots that sprout into nearby aspens, so if the mother tree should get chopped or die, she’ll send her last life to her children. The “clone” trees of a mother … Continue reading An Aspen Forest
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