Though not quite ordinary, snow at Halloween is far from unheard-of in our part of upper New England, and was no surprise at all some five decades back. Mercifully, it had held off on the locally designated trick-or-treat night. I remember how we followed our son, the only child of an eventual five, from door […]
Coyotes had yanked her entrails out, doe’s wounds still bleeding, their kill that fresh. Her upcast eye lay open, and not yet dimmed, invited him to whisper fire, birth, spirit. He was certain he could conjure more, though in fact what he celebrated was having to conjure nothing. Words came unbeckoned, so it tempted […]
I saw a man with a little boy in a backpack. As he walked along he sang some nonsense song. Though half-asleep, the child still seemed to smile. The world’s disasters, I know, are here to stay. Some farmers’ fields lie bleached for lack of rain. Deadly tornadoes elsewhere, hurricanes. Torture, rape, and war– and […]
Its coat showy against the snow, a fox sat unmoving, head cocked like RCA’s old Jack Russell dog, looking up at the lowest limb of a cottonwood, where some pale thing swung. I stood deep in the brush, off-trail, so that riverbank tree looked out of place, its bark largely peeled in dark shards, […]
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 […]