Lessons
She is pointedly staring at the empty water bowl. I fill it. Joints jolting, she thumps down to drink. She can’t bend as low as she once could, so her tongue lengthens to meet the surface. She turns and turns and turns and settles, her buff fur against my mouth, her eyes, inward. She rises and turns and turns and settles again. She smells like spices, like cinnamon, like turmeric. With her bulging elbows, she cannot get comfortable. She has not lost her softness with age, only her lifting grace. Now her grace is in her effort, the timid movements she makes, the way her pain opens me to...
Read MoreIt’s early morning and nothing’s happening
It’s early morning and nothing’s happening, neither the coming of light nor awakening sounds. You sleep as the house clings to a nighttime chill, no lights within it nor without. Awakening, I’m awakened, seemingly my own self as stars begin to fade and lingering deep dreams seek further shores. It’s early, muscle, bone, and stomach have yet to protest as this tomorrow somehow sneaks all around me and, again, consecrates our...
Read MoreWhere the Skin Breaks
Instead of church, I touch a peach, rounding my hand over the mound— touching it fully with hand and mind the way a priest beholds a Host. Running one finger along the seam, I let go, lean back, just look at it: the ripe pink blush, the delicate fur, the curve like the curve of the Earth. Closing my eyes, I fill my nose with scent so generous it moves my toes and makes my eyebrows rise. This, too, I believe, is the body of Christ when I taste the juice where the skin breaks, this sweetness like a faceful of...
Read MoreKindness
Met a lovely woman recently at Sunset Hill Park. Rosalind was seated facing west on one of two benches at a bend in the footpath overlooking the Shilshole Marina, Puget Sound and misty Olympic Mountain range beyond. I acknowledged her and took a seat on the empty bench in the shade of a Japanese Pine tree a few feet away. She commented, I commented on the remarkable weather. Typically a strong prevailing wind blows from the north down along the bluffs, but that afternoon was different. There was a palpable air of tranquility about the park, even the most raucous and territorial of resident...
Read MoreSusquehanna
“View of the Susquehanna,” watercolor by Vivian Starr I. The kayak eases in— its green plastic sides scrape rock as the rower digs her oar through mud—and sunrise- pink waves embrace the vessel. A lonely train howls its morning echo, crossing the old Rockville Bridge where the golden plovers catch insects drawn to mossy walls. An old man watches the fishers work from his porch, watches the train creep, watches the kayaker rest, adjusts his cap to the sun. II. Bass kiss the surface, gulp E. coli microbes. They process the toxin throughout their cold bloodstreams as they...
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