“And when we give each other Christmas gifts in his name, let us remember that he has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans – and all…
Pepper and Poems
109 Articles
109
When the sun is just right in December and you’re walking around the block in your old neighborhood (where you grew up) you’ll see boxes that give wings to words, woodland animals visiting for a season (or longer) and magical beasts…
An October visitor has lately surprised me, sipping sage in the garden as the maples and oaks and hackberries and dogwoods show red and yellow and gold… Each day I wonder: is this our last together? And think: perhaps that…
Nearly a month without rain in Nashville, the trees in their autumn glory look thirsty. My pups stir up a small dust storm each time they go out, pups and dust both finding their way back into the house. The…
It’s hard when you do the right thing and end up in the wrong place. My friend Mary Raymond stops in at Bacon today with a funny and heartfelt essay on how she got herself into a tricky situation, and…
Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced…
by Alicia Ostriker To be blessed said the old woman is to live and work so hard God’s love washes right through you like milk through a cow To be blessed said the dark red tulip is to knock their…
“It was a couple of springs ago. I was driving into New York City from New Jersey on one of those crowded, fast-moving turnpikes you enter it by,” writes Frederick Buechner. “It was very warm. There was brilliant sunshine, and…
This Sunday finds me in Atlanta helping a daughter move into a new apartment. Unpacking yesterday, she couldn’t find an Important pair of black jeans. Her favorite pair. It’s kind of a disaster! (They’ll turn up, of course; surely they…