-
Day Of Sighs
I drove to work, almost able to see the miasma of lies and evil hanging like summer fog in the air through which I moved. Natural beauty almost always lifts me out of myself and helps me forget the ugliness within and without, but yesterday, I could feel it affecting me, entering my spirit’s lungs, sickening me. Arriving at my office and parking in my usual spot beneath the tree, I did not want to leave the shelter of my vehicle, did not want to cross that parking lot, did not want to enter that building where profit is king and spiritual realities are, at best, sneer-fodder. I wanted to…
-
The Last Leaf
Those three words may conjure the famous O. Henry short story, which I read as a boy and which introduced me to the craft of William Sydney Porter. But this is not a story, and there is no surprise ending. The tree under which I park at my job is a forest pansy redbud, a prematurely gnarled presence with large, heart-shaped leaves that are green in the spring, reddish-purple in the summer, and deep maroon in the fall. The last few weeks have withered and stripped the leaves from the tree. All except one. For two weeks now, I have watched one leaf that dangles directly over my windshield when…
-
Departures
The hummingbirds are migrating south now, and it seems that our regulars have already left. Last week, right in the middle of the repugnancy in the cellar, I had scrubbed and cleaned all the feeders and filled them with fresh nectar. The next day after doing so, I went out to watch the little things as they fed, but none were there. Since last Thursday, I have seen only one hummingbird, and he was a male with a very short bill that I have never seen before, probably a migrating fellow passing through and stopping off at a friendly place he’d heard about in some avian chatroom. I looked all…