On a Snow-Kissed Day, A Question Why do we feed the birds? Tell me, friend, and maybe then I’ll know what I need to know. The Sherman brothers – Richard and Robert – wrote “Feed the Birds” for the 1964…
Pepper and Poems
115 Articles
115
Sometimes even Mary Oliver has to get a little firm. The Poet With His Face in His Hands You want to cry aloud for your mistakes. But to tell the truth the world doesn’t need any more of that sound….
Here’s something to make time for on a cold Sunday morning in late fall, battening down the hatches for winter… Postscript by Seamus Heaney And some time make the time to drive out west Into County Clare, along the Flagg…
Found on the blacktop this week: beauty, chaos, relationship. Togetherness and pulling apart, coziness, grief, brokenness, comfort, joyful gatherings, estrangement, dancing. Seeking. The wind blows and it all changes. What did you see on your blacktop? On mine – it…
A boxwood blooms in my yard this November. Delicate white flowers rise out of its green depths. What wonder is this? On closer examination, it appears that a vine has grown up among the holes in the damaged boxwood. I…
I had the chance to travel in Ireland not long ago with one of my young adult daughters and felt both the joy of the moment and the passing of the moment so acutely. Nothing good comes of holding on…
Anne Lamott is at her absolute best in her new book Somehow: Thoughts on Love. She writes about her usual topics – her difficult son and adorable grandson, her kind second husband, beloved friends, the local homeless, her small church,…
The storm came through, as storms do. In its wake I found a branch nearly as tall as a man standing straight up in the earth. It had fallen from the highest reaches of the old bur oak, suggesting this:…
My father’s spirit left his body in a darkened room six weeks ago. On the wings of his last breath, it ascended – a small cloud of color and energy. Believing, disbelieving – that is what my eyes saw….