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
The carnival tent on Fifth Street was as hot as an air balloon. The old men wore shiny shoes, and there was one woman in a dress with piano keys all over it. Ragtime wafted from pianos all over town—from the mainstage on Fifth; from somewhere up in the banisters of the Bothwell Hotel lobby; … Continue reading It Began in Sedalia
Good writing is many things, and you won’t often know until you’ve wrestled it yourself and pleaded like Jacob, "I won't stop until you bless me!" Until you’ve wadded up a few hundred pages and given up on all the stories you began, only to be socked with inspiration when you least expected it. I … Continue reading Good Writing Is
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
Whenever Papa Larry tells of the lavender farm he and Nanny visited up in Maine, I stop to listen, because I can almost smell the sweetness of flowers and sea. And then he'll reminisce to when they met the Lupine Lady herself--- Mrs. Barabara Cooney, who wrote the book Miss Rumphius. This past Christmas, Joel … Continue reading Acres of Lupines
A New Creation Poem Remember that at one time you were a howling wilderness, the haunt of hyenas who cackled among the thistles under a ghost moon. But now in Christ Jesus you are a fresh spring, cooling the rocks and watering the hills that roll under a young sun.
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