Does it make any sense to say I heard dead silence? No matter. I’ll simply declare that I’ve never known such quiet in the sixty years I’ve roamed these woods and hills. I was sitting on a stump beside a frozen bog, an old man who needed rest from his ramble, however stately his pace. […]
Late afternoon, the crows still at gossip in the pock-trunked beech uphill. The tree, having nurtured bears and birds for decades, will have to go. My oldest friend is also failing: addledness and illness. He was always tough as proverbial nails. Cliché? I hardly care. I’ll say it: the whole thing breaks my heart. I’m […]
This old stone house feels chilly for July. Even the moon above the ridge looks cold. At her age, she can go warm up in bed. Will power, strong as ever, snuffs the thought. She hears bells sounding from the village church. But is it some particular hour now? Lord above, has she forgotten […]
Machine, the oddest things still appeal– like the tick of my old truck’s engine when I shut it off and pause at the wheel to think what I’ll say inside– or do. Then the chirp on snow of my boot soles, lamplight indoors, the woodstove’s glow. So tick on, machine–at a dignified pace. I feel […]
One autumn night, I went to a 12-step meeting at the local prison. I hope my presence is of some use at a place like that. I’ve spent no real time in jail, not even a whole night, just some metaphorical spanking for civil rights or anti-war protests. Whatever group of demonstrators I’d joined must […]
Through my car’s open window and their plate glass, I see the elderly couple who own the store. They’re in argument, or at least in disagreement about something… A little way north, Black Angus lie down in the pasture beside the river. Some say that means rain, and it may. Our last surviving farm: what […]
Last night, a foot and a half of snow veiled the predominantly drab ground of the winter, another dire reminder of climate change. Snow or not, though, I can’t account for something I witnessed this morning: I noticed a honeybee caught between a window and a screen. So what to do about this tiny creature? […]