At day's end

a certain slant of light

turns the world

magical

and mysterious.

First posted: December 26, 2019

I come into the peace of wild things,

I come into the presence of still water,

I rest in the grace of the world,

and am free.

                         Wendell Berry

[First posted: November 3, 2019]

We have this understanding, the deer and I.

When I first bring plants home from the nursery,

I leave them out overnight.

If they are still there in the morning, I plant them.

If they aren't, I don't.

[First posted: August 10, 2019]

 
I dine alone this evening,
sitting out on the hillside
enjoying a still summer night.
Suspiciously still.
Where is everyone?
No squirrels? No chipmunks?
(The feeders are full.)
No jays, no junkos,
no chickadees, robins or wrens?
Not even flies?

Was there a memo I didn't receive?

[First posted: July 11, 2019]

 
We all have to face it: Some things are not meant to be.

[First published: June 2, 2019]

The chipmunks and I are developing a very special relationship.

I think of them as my little woodland friends.

They think of me as a primary food source.

We're very close.

[First posted: September 30, 2018]

Storm surge.

Light layered between darkness.

Sunset seems steeped in significance...
Or maybe just one of those days
when anything can be a metaphor for something else.

I really need to stop fretting about the next four years.

 [First posted: November, 2016]

    Some days the sun doesn't simply set.
    It takes the world with it,
    and this valley becomes
    a shimmering chameleon
    of changing color and mood rhythms,
    a creature of the night
    slowly waking,
    mysterious, lurking,
    freed at last by the departing light.

[First posted: March 31, 2016]

They are collecting pieces of people at a Belgian airport.

A child is tortured to punish his father.

God has been appropriated for a dubious political campaign,

and a thuggish clown wins another presidential primary.

At times the world seems too much with us,
almost too much to bear.

Yet this day also offers blossom antidotes,
beautiful, brief,
a momentary relief,
but it is enough, it is enough,
before the world comes rushing back in.

[First posted: March 24, 2016]

 "Quoth the raven, Nevermore."

Recently, on a dreary afternoon
in the bleak of December, I,
made snowbound by a sudden storm,
was writing at my desk,
when there experienced that uncanny dread
of being surveiled.

Pausing my pen, with growing apprehension I turned 
to the glum gray light beyond my window,
and there didst behold two glowing orbs 
staring at me out of the dusk.

"Fiend!" I cried. "Infernal fowl who haunts my dreams!"
(Okay, maybe a little overdramatic.)
"What message bring you from that other world?"

and braced myself for the specter to speak its dreaded curse of
Nevermore.
Or maybe, Anymore?
Furthermore?

But spake it not. Neither did the apparition depart,
but kept its unholy vigil outside my window, staring,
forever staring with red demonic eyes--
which actually turned out to be the ruby underparts on a hummingbird's throat.