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Okay, Then…
It’s 0530 as I write this, and the temperature is 43F, with a sunny 73F forecast for the afternoon. When I pulled back the shower curtain a while ago, the spider was sitting there, just underneath the spout. He currently resides somewhere out in the back yard…dry and unharmed, but much chillier than he would have been had I not disturbed him. Which brings up the question…am I ever allowed to wander into circumstances that necessitate God removing me from them, removals which elicit grumbling and questions and frowns? I’m well aware that I’m in the tedious territory usually occupied by college students polishing off a bottle of wine in…
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Ascent Of A Dog
Jinx got skunked last night. I went out with him a bit before sundown for a post-supper walk. He left the road and loped across one of his favorite pastures, and I busied myself taking some photos and enjoying the cool breeze while awaiting his return. He was gone a few minutes longer than usual and when he returned, he threw himself to the ground at my feet and wallered around in the grass, apparently just enjoying himself. Then we turned for home. As soon as we walked in and Jinx walked past my wife, she cried out, “He’s been skunked!” I stood there gaping at her. I hadn’t smelled…
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The Adolescence Of The Season
We slept in our recliners last night, and other than a bit of tossy-turnyness, it wasn’t a bad night’s sleep. When we awakened, I found that it had gone chilly overnight. Rain is supposed to move in again later today, and the next few days the temperatures will drop a bit, with frost a possibility. Spring in this region is a sort of seasonal adolescence. Unsettled and mercurial, with expected patterns and routines suddenly tumped-over by exciting or terrifying changes, then calming back down to a slow flow. This makes the days seem shorter, the evening skies more dramatic after the cloud sprites have had at the heavens with their…
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For The Beauty
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever. The force that drives the water through the rocks Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams Turns mine to wax. And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks. The hand that whirls the water in the pool Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind Hauls my shroud sail. And I am dumb to tell the hanging…
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And Slows His Horse To A Meaning Walk
Animals all around me these days, drawing my eye, and I don’t know if they’re just more there these days, or if my perceptions are heightened, or if some hand is tapping and pointing and gesturing at me. If I can’t say, who can? I sat today at lunch, slow-chewing my meal of leftovers — hoarded and beloved and anticipated — and watching the parking lot around me, and the cold clouds covered all, and a bush next to me moved as if breathing, and a mockingbird arose from its leaves and sat and sang for a while, and she watched me — yes, I just know she was a…
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Where Do They Go?
By the time I took my lunch break, my head was pounding from the effort of a morning spent choking back my responses to idiocy and incompetence. I stomped outside to my parking spot, got in, and unclenched my teeth long enough to put food between them, and then I clenched and clenched again, rage as masticating fuel, rage as my mealtime companion. I thought I might doze into a nap, escape for a little while, but my mind would not obey. It fed me the little imaginary conversations that are always worse than the ones that actually happen. I sat in the seat and reacted again and again to…