He spoke of how one day he tried to find distraction by cleaning out his attic. As though he could. Up there he came upon his son’s toy Tonka tractor, pocked by rust. It seemed a relic from an ancient age but something too the boy might use right then. As though he could. “That […]
Pure quiet in the room, but for tat-tat-tat– sparks from your fireplace against the flue. You imagine they seek escape, as you did in yesterday’s early morning vision, which let you rise high, for instance, above the frame of that winter-killed deer. When you chanced upon it on foot last week, the bones had somehow […]
There’s always been discourse between us. It’s never seemed less than crucial, but once the children grew, its range began to grow too, and it started to stray from the normal, if such a thing exists. For years we’ve assumed, for instance, those maples down by the pond were red ones, common as pavement. Then […]
The whole thing mystified me at age fifteen. Knocking on eighty’s door, I’m a lot less mystified. I’m less troubled too, though I must allow that the event still leaves me strangely uneasy. I’d been walking back from the school ball field. We couldn’t get enough boys together for an actual game, so we just […]
He beholds a ragged windrow of snow, dull remnant, and wonders if drink or dope might not kiss him and make him better. The writer knows they wouldn’t, couldn’t, or hopes he knows it, hopes he’ll recall the gloom and sometimes utter madness he left in his wake, for him and all. The windrow is […]
All of a sudden, a crowd, most of us pretty much strangers, which seems to me– well, strange: our village and others here in this stretch of valley are tiny. But John, who’s been the chief of the volunteer fire department for years, shows up exactly as the ambulance crew appears. I do know John. […]
Last night, our pond reclaimed a foot from its ice. New water winks blue-green, and blackbirds shriek From wire and weed. It’s good to be out. Two boys Hike by me at social distance. Each breeze-tossed leaf Looks as crisp and twitchy as a chipmunk’s ear. The mud road grasps at boot-soles as I walk […]
I can’t explain, but it’s true. At ten years old, I beheld the lemon and slate of the slender fish, flashing below the surface. My father told me to settle back: my gawking over the gunwale rocked our canoe, E.M. White Guide’s Model with feathered hull-planks, the one he called a work of art. It […]
Autumn’s at hand, and I recollect how you combed every wisp of weed from your garden in a pair of separate Septembers, each one for a different child’s wedding here. Though the mess came back too soon– pigweed, purslane, vetch– I’ll never forget how you knelt in the scrabbled dirt; how you smiled; how the […]
Tink shouted, “Did you hear my bad news?” I turned from bucking up firewood and killed the engine. How different he looked, our tough old bantam neighbor– a rascal, but stolid as stone. Here stood a suddenly tinier version. No one in town would believe he’d cry. Things had to be bad. He told me […]