I meet a young couple in the canyon. A dog in their company tells me more about them than they guess. I see a piñon pine tree alight with fall sunshine. As I exit the canyon, I discover a prying eye. This is another long and the last installment in this series but it isn’t [...]
In which I make my way into Crossfire Canyon and meet a wondrous bird. I muse upon the experience of eye contact with other species, referencing N. Scott Momaday and Martin Buber. I see the light, loose and free in the canyon–it’s beautiful. Part one here, part two here, part three here.
As I worked [...]
In part three, the mental illness storyline continues, but the mystery of the cause of Mark’s troubles comes somewhat to light. I muse upon the idea that when misfortune besets you, others watching from a distance sometimes suppose you must have done something to deserve it. Just when I think everything’s on the upswing, my [...]
This is a long post. Also, emotionally, it’s perhaps overfull and addresses subjects like pregnancy and childbirth from a standpoint I held over twenty years ago. The “mental illness” storyline continues. Part one may be found here.
I spent the next five hours in the basement with my husband trying to find him in whatever place [...]
This multiple-part series is from a longer work-in-progress I’ve begun that recounts my experiences in Recapture Canyon in southeast Utah. Woven throughout the longer narrative are my ideas about language’s part in evolution, culture, and relationship–including what language reveals about and how it affects the ways we treat with people who live with what I [...]
We’ll breakfast at Las Brisas when we’re gray,
Discussing all our commonalities
And differences, admiring the breeze.
We’ll chatter and remark about the way
The rocking eucalyptus branches seem
To hammock threads of morning sun along
The coast. Pale clouds will sift to butter-cream
And melon, swimming through a blue sarong
Of tinctured sky. I’ll scan the beach and sea
Where I once played [...]
Today I read your verses, and I wept.
Your loss, transcending centuries, has torched
a hole in my self-pity, scattered ash
across four hundred years, and scorched
my martyrdom into the oak-slat floor.
The sad account of how your house burned down,
your passing of the ruins every day.
Each broken brick of future, smudged and brown.
And now I know the leaving [...]
I walk barefoot through the grassy
knoll,
your heaven – remembering your
green thumb and long sought after
gardens
lost to daydreams or disease.
The flowers you planted I never
learned
the names of, something exotic,
I was never good in Latin. These
you spent
the most time with, watering them
like children. I think they listened to
you more.
Your sister says I have no business
gardening – I [...]
I keep the totem in my pocket
as a harp song sung with a
steady bear paw, wedged
between your photograph
and an eagle feather. Before
we parted, you whispered it
would serve me well on rainy
days when my road was too
much to stand on. This morning
I pulled the car to the shoulder
to watch an osprey hover with
a cold sun. I [...]
Part One here.
Lala sat down on the curb and motioned for Davey to sit next to her. As he slowly sat down and settled his feet into the orange leaves filling the gutter, Lala was opening up her laptop and getting it ready for a little presentation.
“All right, now first of all, look at this [...]