Tag Archives: mindfulness
The world’s most perfect couple
She lays herself out on the slow current, neck extended, orange paddles holding her steady as he circles, bobbing his shimmering head, then climbs aboard, mates, nibbles briefly her elegant nape, dismounts and circles once more, fast — an exhilaration, an exuberance — exhausting his fletched desire before settling beside her on the bank, resting […]
Black Friday
Choose Before Me from the drop- down menu, then Parents, then Mother. Place in your cart her tomboy youth, how she outplayed the boys through long summer days, cupped in small palms fireflies gathered by dusk, their light mirroring her eyes. Choose Memories, then Family, then Father. Add to your cart how he carried you […]
Later, you will be right
or earlier, error being a matter of premature or posthumous application of an answer to a question not now present, but also a matter of laziness, the query stated without the precision necessary to make the answer fit: hand in glove, key in lock. Your only chance is now. If it happens, you won’t know […]
This morning, a murder
This morning, a murder of crows puncturing the dawn, cawing and bobbing on bare branches, alive with alarm, or exhilaration. How I envied their full- throated response to the call of that moment — so pure, and sharp, and temporary — and how they then left it wholly behind, flew gladly — without one backward glance […]
Today I am changed
by a neighbor of ambiguous ethnicity, too beautiful to ignore, out walking her dog, who can scarcely contain his friendliness (they are each multilingual and kind), and she a therapist, to boot, who tells me she brushes her teeth differently each time, disrupting habit, who encourages me to do the same. It can change your […]
Say sensible things
When animals talk to themselves they say only sensible things: the noun of threat or safety the noun of wind of sun of rain of snow of shelter and rest and warmth and many good verbs: eat drink fly swim run also play the verbs purr and sing call and thrum and few but crucial […]
Bisection
Do deer exist in the dark? Or does dawn extrude them from night’s residual grace? I assume so much. Saw me in half; bid me choose: the omniscient brain drained of wonder, or blind legs that carry me, tentative and curious, through palpable air?
Still I belong
Still I belong to the earth, the grass greening through spring snow, the white shoulders of mountains, the doe bounding and twitching vast soft ears that hear what I cannot. I belong to the early forsythia, bright with promise. To the late killing frost. I belong to the newborn finch, naked and blind, the jay […]
What if we never
turned and fired, but kept walking, our backs to each other, until we forgot the nature of our grievances, grew weary of the weight in our hands, the long heavy barrels, the ancient ammunition, and dropped our pistols in the pile of pointless things, disarmed, disoriented, dazed by the trees singing through the mouths […]
Ephemeral
I was mortified to learn recently from an online calculator that my life expectancy is 94.64 years. That’s just, well … piggish. This is mostly not my fault. I have good genes and socioeconomic privilege. I don’t understand how to smoke, so I never acquired that vice. I am hard-wired for exercise. Also, I have done what I can to […]
Meditatio Ephemera 