Month: March 2021

Someday next month, Liza Rose James will enter this life, carrying the name that you gave yourself, that my son will give in turn to his daughter. The joy of your life, the eighth wonder of your world, your Max, already lives on in his son, Maxwell. I don’t think most children think much about…

I’ve never grown berry vines before, unless the grape arbor on Holyoke counts. I put in two black raspberry plants last year and they sprouted out beautifully just last week. I realized I had to get serious about some sort of trellis They’re at the back of the main raised bed, the side that’s not…

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”—Dom Helder Camara We fall behind, the pace is grueling, we can only cover so much ground, there is only so much time, there is only so much we can…

Clear the trampled decks, cast off the cruel yokes of winter, uproot the unwieldy remnants of the season past, take the brown and blackened beds firmly by the shoulders and gently shove them back to their greenest, most golden glory This morning, there were serious gardening plans and skies seriously heavy with not just a…

Rarely does the first day of Spring actually feel like the first day of Spring, but it’s happening this year. Just this week there are brown buds opening to the softest greens, early bulbs breaking through winter earth, morning air sifting in through still-bare trees, sharp on the skin but gentle on the spirit Crows…

I had a poster of Violeta Parra for years before I finally heard this song. I just knew that she was the John Lomax of Chile, and that she was a great influence on Victor Jara, whose music I did know I give thanks to life, she says. Que ha me dado tanto. That has…

One of the central ideas behind these writings was to slow my daily life down just enough to take a quiet walk through nature and observe the earth as she came alive, mark the passage of her silver cousin through the night sky, marvel at the sly dance she does weaving through the ancient beings…

A whisper-switch of a moon, a thin-lipped, upended goblet of a moon, a tickled by sun and flooded by night moon, a help me I’m lost in the trees at the horizon moon, a see you on the other side moon I wish she would drop the illusion, this crazy notion that I am the…

The elm and hackberry branches are thick with brown buds today, only the willow presents her green bonnet. The earth begins to glow. The air fuses river mud with winterberry bramble. Wind and rain both present with power and new life The Worm Moon is new tonight and the land trembles with their incessant turmoil….

Bridle hand caresses turns in a road that leave dust hard in the wake of the horses, past homes that live in the darkness. There are roots beneath the stables, bathed in darkness, waiting on the softest rain Children appear in a cloud, astride the horses, all entering a clearing from different directions. They are my…