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Nineteen
Nineteen I am standing, I am watching on the strait of southern grass through which the fickle current of fogs undulates in the early part of day before the skyfire lifts enough to sear it off. I do not notice the hawks above until I see my dog’s muzzle tracking them; the most sky-aware dog I’ve ever seen, heart all witched with things that glide and soar and perch and sing. We move along and bees begin their sorties across our path, seeking the remaining sweetpea and Rose of Sharon, saddlebags packed with gold, hourglass ever before them as they try and outfly the time when frost will sheet their…
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Walking Up An Incline
Walking up to the mailbox today, I had an epiphany of sorts. I never leave myself alone. I am forever telling myself that I need to be doing x, y, or z. I am perpetually dissatisfied with how I spend my time. I sift through my past days, months, decades, and ignore the glittering flecks. Instead, I focus on the dark sludge along the bottom lip of the pan. There’s always some project that I should be doing. Some habit I need to break. Some improvement I need to make. Some shortcoming I need to fix. Such a mess. There are two of me, (And there are two of you,…
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Mist Will Lift
A coworker who sits next to me at my office tested positive for the Covid-19 thingamajig, so I was required to be tested at a local hospital. It was interesting to note what a ghost town the hospital was. I was expecting squads of harried nurses and doctors to be running up and down the hallways, calling out orders and wheeling lifeless bodies on gurneys and asking for assistance. But the place was all but abandoned. A girl young enough to be my granddaughter performed my test, which, while not especially painful, was markedly unpleasant. She asked me if I was okay when she removed the fourteen foot swab from…
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Will Find You Out
The weather in these mountains is very unusual these days. The heat is absolutely tropical, with moist, saturated air — still air, with no breeze at all — and the sun feeling closer to the earth, the way it feels in Texas. Thunderstorms every day and every night, and the insects are thriving and the frogs are practicing for their annual Dog Days oratorio. Speaking of frogs, this morning a fine specimen was perched atop the rail around the back deck. I’ve heard that when one sees a turtle on top of a fence post, one can be sure that someone put him there. The frog is probably a lot…
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Wraith
My wife drew my attention last night to the signs in front of a house near our place. The local funeral homes place these little signs, reading “Slow — Funeral” on either side of homes where someone has died, presumably to encourage an atmosphere of quiet and to discourage solicitors and other annoyances. This morning when I drove past the house, I looked to see if there was a funeral wreath on the door, and there it was, black and somber and silent. The house usually has a rather festive air to it. The owners keep candles and lights in the windows, they decorate lavishly for Christmas, and they keep…
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Twinkling Of An Eye
Yesterday morning, I did something I rarely do. I stopped for breakfast on the way to work. I’ve been feeling less-than-stellar lately, mostly because of work-related stress. I try to heed my body’s promptings, and yesterday was one of the times I sensed a clear prompting. I usually don’t eat breakfast during the week, and then I enjoy my wife’s breakfast-brunch feasts on the weekends — I just function better this way. But when I awake feeling puny, I do eat a bite in the mornings in order to fuel myself for the day. So I went through the drive-thru at a locally-owned joint that serves first-rate sausage biscuits. Got…
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Eyes Without A Face
On the drive to work, the approach of summer announced itself with the early bright sky. I am still pleased with how clear the skies are these days. Ever since this manufactured worldwide crisis began, the murky web of vapor trails in the sky has been almost completely nonexistent. To my eyes, the sky seems bigger, clearer, realer. Even at night, the effect seems pronounced, with the stars appearing nearer and more…present with me. When I arrived at work after a week away, the tree beneath which I park seemed fuller and lusher, its purplish leaves nodding in the morning breeze. I touched my cheek to one of the leaves…
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Reliable Light
It’s a curious thing, a purely human situation, to propose to accomplish something and to saturate the attempt with prayer and focus and keen energy….and then to have the door slammed in one’s face and the word “NO!” shouted into one’s ear with the terrible power of God’s own acoustics. My wife and I are sitting in our little farmhouse as the dark covers the grassy acres outside. We are stunned with the rapidity with which all the things we had hoped for in this past week fell apart and melted into nothingness. I don’t think we have given into despair, but it feels like despair. Disappointment and disillusionment and…
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Once Was Open
At the foot of our mountain sits an abandoned auto repair garage. I pass it twice daily on my commute. Gary owned and ran the place. He was a lean, friendly fellow with an open face and direct manner. Shortly after we bought our place years ago, I had need of a mechanic and decided to give Gary’s place a try. It was a good decision. He was honest right down to the ground, a master mechanic, and remarkably fair. He once kept my old pickup truck an entire day, ran it up and down the mountain roads, crawled all over and under it, in an attempt to locate the…
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Seasons Of Life
Things have shifted, and now I am detaching from some things and moving towards some new ones. A time of nervous stomachs and pleasant anticipation, a period of feeling overwhelmed and unprepared, a stretch of unsettled hours, of feeling my age, of pushing out again into the waters of hope, watching the clouds and the horizon. It’s lighter in the mornings now, and I see the bicyclist on the shoulder of the road each day on the way to work. I lift my hand and breathe a blessing and a prayer, and as always, I wonder where he is going and what he does and how his day and his…