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Bless The Beasts
Last night while my wife and I were relaxing, I watched the spotted twins romp. The ever-sleeping Dixee paid them no heed, continuing to slumber in her little bed by my wife’s chair, undisturbed in her deafness and warm in her sweater. It’s never a sure bet as to which dog will start the donnybrook. When Jinx does it, he usually sits above Bluebelle and growls at her, a rising wail that concludes with three or four sharp barks. While he’s barking at his sister, he’s looking around at us to see if we’re watching. Then he moves to Bluebelle and starts gnawing on a leg or snapping at her…
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Mothers Day
The rhythms of our life together are easy and harmonious. For more than a week, my wife and I have moved in a steady cadence of digging, planting, sowing, watering, trimming, taming. We are tired but pleased with the overall effect. This year, being outside together has become a series of luminous hours, hours in which we are as rooted to our little soil & rock tasks as surely as if we were branched and barked and leafed ourselves. Over the weekend, what time we didn’t spend gardening was spent on the back porch, where we took our meals, rested, and watched the cascade of different varieties of birds as…
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Satan Is No Creator
Jinx was a very difficult dog this evening, and I’ve been giving him a bit of the cold shoulder. He’s gotten into a very bad habit of refusing to come when called. Or worse, running at top speed away from us when he’s called. He was barking ferociously at something in the woods along the side of the house. The noise he made was of such a pitch and intensity that it made me think it might be something beyond the usual squirrel or coon. He finally came down to the door, but dashed away every time we tried to coax him inside. My wife was finally able to cajole…
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Drained
This morning when I awoke, it was 46F. It will get down to about the same temperature tonight. The day was one of those luminous ones, the kind that start with swirling showers of yellow and gold and red leaves, the kind with high puffy clouds riding across the sky so blue it frightens the eyes, clouds lit from within with the high-wattage bulb of glory, the kind where the warm, buttery air carries within it the scent and hint of the frost that is coming on like a jove, the killing, revivifying frost, the dear rime of the earth’s whirl. It was a difficult day to be trapped inside…
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Those Who Soar
I wrote recently about how I hope that Heaven will include for me the chance to fly, to see things from the perspective of the majestic birds I watch daily with a wistful eye and sometimes with a catch in my throat. Last evening while walking with Jinx, a large bird flew across the road in front of me, then swooped high into the locust tree a few yards away. I only got a flash of a look at it, and wondered if it was a peregrine falcon, or perhaps a Cooper’s hawk. I have seen a peregrine twice in the last year in the fields near our home, and…
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Winter Has Ended
Today is for me a vivid reminder of all that slumbers during the cold and bleak times, when all seems dark or lost or hopeless or lonely or silent or uncaring. Beneath the covering of dead and moldering leaves, beneath the sheen of tenacious frost, behind the apparently lifeless gray sticks and clumps — life itself slumbers. May the Giver of all life bless us with a strong sense of His presence, and may we expend our energies in following our own unique God-given paths, and less energies in worrying about the jackals that howl and bark from the underbrush on either side. The world is awakening from its slumber.…
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Daddy Longlegs
Last night, a daddy longlegs startled my wife while she was reading by running up her arm. She shrieked, then laughed when she saw that it was not a spider. I took the little fellow outside and released him on the porch. I have a history with the daddy longlegs, also known to the less-rustic and less-sentimental as “harvestmen.” They are fangless, nonvenomous, and quite interesting to watch. Have you ever seen a daddy longlegs take a drink of water? I have. Have you ever held one in your hand and watched it flex its legs in a kind of push-up in the warm light? I have. Have you ever…