Time, Place, Classroom
WHEN The world gets so noisy. Too many voices straining, pushing past their natural limits to be heard. Our small ears can’t discern provenance or factuality. Reactions quicken, turning knee-jerk, protective. WHERE There is the place where trees thicken into extended families, root systems entwined beneath the earth. Look for the leafy canopy that forms […]
When all this is over…
WHEN THIS IS OVER Bring bread, chewy and warm, wrapped in that red checkered tablecloth that always sings picnic, which is short for happy family, easy friendships, peace and plenty in our town state country planet. We never went on one, a picnic, not once in all our together years even though we had that […]
The Wisdom of Clouds
“ You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.” Pema Chodron CIRRUS You are wisp, feet rarely touching dirt. Your gaze cannot be met. They call it lazy eye, but we know better. How could anyone expect you to hone a vision when you straddle a few different dimensions most of the time? […]
Prospecting for Grace
Praise The faithful sun, generously stirring energies of Earth and atmosphere, coaxing every green thing towards the rising song of spring. Parents walking with their children outside, smiling and laughing, nodding at neighbors out washing their cars. Quieted streets yielding their usual ruthless noise to melodious birdsong, squirrels rustling in the brush, the wind whistling […]
FISHING
Perched on the frost hardened bank of the wide, cold river, eyes intent on the rushing water, dark and high, I notice the greenish brown river grasses, rooted hopefully in their muddy beds, in a permanent lean as the current pulls them forward, and my eyes train between the reeds, strain towards that bottom where […]
My Bread and Butter
Hello, dear blog. Hello, faithful tribe of readers. My neglect this past month stems not from writers block, but from posting block. Yes, it’s a thing, one which might even merit capitalization. Posting Block. I have spent mornings and nights in awe of the earth’s revolutions, the comings and goings of light and darkness. I’ve […]
Turn, turn, turn, turn
OCTOBER October is like an unplanned drive, the roads back country and meandering, the other cars occasional, a determined deer or quicksilver squirrel the biggest hazards, and then just like that the road widens, and thickens, a harsh unnatural line slicing the middle, asphalt and buildings erupting like an acne upon the tender earth. Last […]
WALKING
At twelve, thirteen, fourteen months, when most children begin to walk, or make a show of pulling their soft wobbly bodies to stand, you were content to sit and rub the carpet, watch the fibers grow fuzz beneath hands you didn’t seem to know belonged to you. A plump child you were, with flesh-ringed legs […]
Temporal Tryst
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero, meaning “seize the day while trusting as little as possible on what tomorrow might bring”. Tomorrow In a daytime dream, the kind of interlude I once slipped into and out of as easily as frog to pond, and as shiny, with the slick lubricant of youth, I met some […]
Hearing the Ocean in a Tea Cup ( again)
The Sea, the Sea I met the Pacific in 1982, she in her blue-green majesty, and I, in perpetual denim, my words untested and eyes not yet jaded. For twelve months, hundreds of days, I lived so close I could sense her depths by the movement of fine hairs on my forearms, her salt with […]