It has been six months since my grandmother’s passing. Sometimes things like art grow still inside a grieving heart. Perhaps I'm ready to write again. Time will tell. She was singing a year ago, Thanksgiving in our kitchen, Which is why I remember it. Now I watch, through the narrow slit of a newly painted …
Continue reading Lace and Yellow Roses
There’s not much literary inspiration in caring for my grandmother. There is a lot of sadness—a lot of bittersweet hanging like cobwebs from the ceiling. A lot of soaking up a final moment, and yet still thinking you’ll have many more to come. But after a few months, we are now down to our last …
After they die, I crack a cold, cheap beer and comb through my belongings. I look for letters, texts, facebook comments and photographs. Listen to messages to see if maybe, somewhere along line, they’ve left me the gift of their voice. After they die, I scramble desperately for something left of them. Something tangible. Something …
There was a pair of house finches building a small nest outside our window. I’d watch them weave it all together—the female, with her muted brown feathers, working relentlessly on her art. The twigs meticulously placed, one over the next—how they intertwined with one another. The male, with his bright cherry red head and breast, …
Continue reading The House Finch
It’s taken me now just about a month to come up with words to express my feelings of our time. I’ve thought about it a lot—nearly endlessly, to be honest. The words I would normally write feel cheap—because it hasn’t really gotten better, certainly not for many of us. And it might not get better …
Continue reading On a Hot Tin Roof
How do you talk about a sunset, without sounding like every conversation about sunsets? At the market, the checker she says, The sunset is beautiful—I love that I can watch it from this window. I say, Oh yes, the colors are stunning. Those pinks, those yellows. Then, when I get home, my mother-in-law, she says, …
“For a moment, I expected the impossible. And then it happened.” Where are you? Wild winds whipping up against a desolate landscape. Cold skies and a raging heart. You have been uprooted. Torn from the comfort of the ordinary, you have been exposed. But do not go blind, little dove. Look around you. The …
There are still things inside the world to bring astonishment. The first sip from a cup of coffee in the morning, while you watch the dayglow filter through the window. The way that someone asks how are you and they really mean it. The eggs that I collect, each morning, from my chickens. The weight …
The Wild Heart of Life 