Dear Sergio: The Great Blue Heron flew over the house shortly before dawn this morning with its raucous announcement: the others will be returning to the tall dead trees in the swamp to begin the spring refurbishing of the nests…large constructs of dead branches lined with fine twigs and green leaves. “Remote, inaccessible situations are […]
Words in Progress
Leaving
LEAVING Moving, slowly at first, a walk further than usual, earlier than before though not quite at dawn, a loose leash of daylilies at the ankle, then a night under Orion disappearing, each horizon a new mote in the eye. Moving along is how, looking back, I left.
Maple Syrup
ACTUAL GRACE The earth is beaten into dull stuff. A smudge of sun rides under the bellying sky. Winter is finishing slowly, like sap over a wood fire. At Phil’s Restaurant, breakfast customers hash over the Town Report. We still have our say. We still sing our annual hymn of republic and objection. Now while […]
The Quilt
THE QUILT The auctioneer turns her. The men wait on a corn planter and a wooden box of assorted nails. She is offered from the porch of her own house. We pluck at her skirt. What is she to me? I am waiting for that box of nails. What is she to me? The […]
The End
We talked as though we were strangers, side by side on the deck of a boat near Jeffrey’s Ledge on a summer Sunday; but the subject was familiar. We pulled in flashy mackerel, apricot squid, tossed them back. We hauled up dogfish; we caught the same ones over and over. They were heavy as […]
Retro Travel
In 1989, Charter and I embarked on what would become an annual road trip. Somewhere in North America. In a Corvette. This unlikely odyssey began in, of all places, Reims, France when, on the way home from a trip to Paris financed by our year of not smoking, we happened upon a quirky car museum […]
