-
Second Sunday Of Advent
We’ve looked everywhere in this region and still can’t find old-fashioned icicles for our Christmas tree. Is there some connection between the CO-vid and thin strips of shiny mylar? If we manage to find any icicles, we’re going to buy many, many packs of them. Our tree always has icicles. It’s just the way things are done. We drape them, toss them, hang them, throw them…we need them. When I stepped outside this morning, I could smell the coffee in the pot, and I wanted a gallon of it, but duty and companionship called, so I walked with care on the deck boards and felt the grit of Jack’s sugar…
-
And Suddenly It Was December
The new heat pump is working splendidly, which is a very good thing, given the teeth-chattering temperatures we’ve had this week. I’m grateful it wasn’t this cold and windy while the fellows were here installing everything. I think I neglected to mention that the gentleman who owns the HVAC company brought his father along for the second half of the festivities. He inherited the business from his dad. While they worked, I chatted with the father, an amiable man with a quick smile and penetrating blue eyes. Turns out that he actually installed the original furnace in our basement. He described doing the work all those years ago, and spoke…
-
All Saints Day
“Mom? Why did Jesus have twelve opossums? I mean, what did he do with them?” — Lizzy Beck This morning during my walk with Jinx, I was struck by how absolutely silent the world was. My own steps were the only sound in the pewter air. It was almost easy to believe that last night the air had been full of ghosts and spirits of ill-will, because the early Sunday hours were so clean, so spotless, so purified. Surely all the saints were watching as I crunched gravel beneath my boots and Jinx’s tail cut the air like a buggy whip. Into my mind came the opening line of Poe’s…
-
The Bales Of October
We were up this morning in the silver moonlit dark of a mountain October, Mrs. Orr preparing the dogs’ breakfast and the coffee. We watched the dogs with some wariness, as we had an incident last night. Each evening about 830 or so, I take them outside for what we call the biscuit run. They do their business in the backyard, and then tumble back inside to await their treat: a dog biscuit for Jinx and a half-biscuit for Dixee. Usually, it’s a mellow time. But last night, Jinx was snuffling up a few crumbs from his biscuit when Dixee decided to come over and insert herself between him and…
-
The Silver Curtain
I am drawn to certain things, and I cannot tell why. Certain types of music, certain faces, certain scents…and these are not merely things congenial to me. They seem to have an underlying pull, a significance to me. Why? Why this sort of music or this shading of light, and not another? Some time ago, I flirted for a while with the idea of reincarnation and thought perhaps the mysterious affinities were related to a past life. But I could never make the full idea of reincarnation “fit,” mostly because I looked around, almost completely unsuccessfully, to see if I could discern anyone who seemed to be an “old soul,”…
-
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…
-
Evening In The Tenth Month
As I write these words, I have a quilt over my legs. The cool night air is sifting through the screens on the windows and doors, and the crickets are scraping their little fiddles out in the yard, tuning up for their final concert of the season. I don’t yet know when the first frost will fall; it will likely be a bit later than normal, since we had such a lingering season of heat. But who can say? The earth in its tilting and turning trip around the sun may play a trick on us yet and dust us with the tiny crystals in a stroke of whimsy. All…
-
Lances In Darkness
Because we didn’t own a car when I was a boy, I was always thrilled to ride in one. The speed of modern transport has never lost its magic for me, and this perpetual appreciation stems from remembering how it feels to walk to or from home when hot and tired while watching cars purr past with their air conditioning and comfortable bench seats. I used to play a mental game anytime I rode in a car. I would imagine I had a long, long sword, sharper than the stropped razor’s in R.V.’s barber shop, longer than a vaulter’s pole, extending out the passenger side window. And as we would…
-
June Into July
There he is again, above me, half-watching me as I am half-watching him. As I write this, the hummingbird is on the telephone wire over my head, his tiny feet curled around the wire, his baton of a bill moving left and right, conducting the orchestra only he and his kin can hear. The summer day is hot and still, and much quieter than the summer Sundays of my youth, the sultry days down in the Delta when the reedy drone of locusts and katydids stretched across the hours and surprised you at night when it began to fade. Quieter here, yes, and perhaps not as hot, but hot still.…