Linz, Austria (http://www.sternwarte.at) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6756468
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Recurring Dream
Dad once said he had a recurring dream where he saw a photograph of himself in a Civil War soldier’s uniform. He never told me it was blue or gray. Maybe combat paints everyone the same in the recurring dream dad used to have. Though he grew up south of the Mason-Dixon, the color did not seem to matter of the Civil War soldier’s uniform. It could be he wrestled with his choice to leave Virginia and settle in the North; he might have said that of his recurring dream, the subconscious aware of conflict within. He mused it revealed a previous life, this image of a soldier's uniform: a life his choice to leave home had ended, with a rebirth of sorts coming after. Dad once said he often had a dream about a Civil War soldier’s uniform.
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Watching Swallows
It’s the dinner hour of early evening and swallows do aerial maneuvers: they skim above an empty baseball field’s fresh-cut grass in eager pursuit of insects, darting every direction, changing course at impossible angles with such acceleration it baffles the mind how their little bodies can handle it. My toddler raises his hand in greeting whenever they pass by us close enough to catch his rapt attention, then he runs as fast as his short legs will carry him: over the field, toward the low-slung sun, giggling with delight at each quick step. -
Keep a 6′ Distance
Shelter-in-Place Quarantine be damned, skateboarders are doing stunts at the park surrounded by a chain-link fence. Riding the rain-slicked, concrete basin on low-friction wheels, their new skill is to keep a six-foot distance from one another at all times. Vultures Cylinders of warm air lift off the reservoir, invisible but for a vulture colony riding thermals into the sky – wingspans in profile like chevrons, they wheel upward, on the lookout for a carcass to sustain them. Predawn Ritual The stovetop burner set to high, its element starts to glow red under a steel pot of water: bubbles escape with a whisper shifting into a muted roar that quiets when lifted off heat and is poured over ground coffee. Urban Tree Roots The sidewalk has a rise in it by the base of a sycamore where thick, shallow roots bulge the earth – an unexpected disruption of pavement’s intended flatness, as if the tree flexed its muscles to tear apart a garment that restricts. Hawk on a Telephone Line The buteo perched on a wire spanning Central Expressway this cloudy Sunday afternoon is likely unaware that only about a hundred years ago the first telephone call happened from San Francisco to New York. A signal stirs inside the hawk – it spreads its wings and flies away then lifts itself to soaring height. What is beyond the horizon, marvels in the next century? The distance between us distorts, conversations wrap the planet.
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Diwali
Diwali in Wildfire Season High-voltage power lines above tree tops: what we see from our apartment windows. The neighbors are celebrating Diwali, a triumph of light over darkness. The winds shift and we can smell wildfire in the county a hundred miles north of us. These gusts can snap a cable apart and spread the burn over countless acres. To preempt the risk of igniting more, the utility company decides to shut off large expanses of their grid: a million without electricity left to rely on candles, batteries, and the kindness of those with generators.
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West Cliff Drive
The sea, it heaves great sighs - rhythmic and persistent - like the steady breath of someone sleeping.
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Jim Harrison
When I Heard Jim Harrison Died I was on my way to Joseph D. Grant county park, listening to Prairie Home Companion. They played a Gillian Welch song, and afterward, in a mellow voice which sought to comfort, Garrison Keillor told us Jim had died - had swum into a celestial river where diaphanous angels welcome the fluid soul at last. I thought about him during my hike that afternoon, as I walked across a field where sunlight bends through wildflower petals. To my left stood Lick Observatory; on clear nights, patient scientists look for where swallows nest in the eyebrows of God.
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Moss Landing
Otters frolic in the estuary - water churns as they tumble about - and snowy egrets, like dabs of sea foam rest along the shore, their heads tucked under their wings.
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Strawberry Season
Strawberry Season Back Home in Vermont, Viewed by a Guy Who Now Lives in California After a long winter and a wet spring when sunshine was scarce enough for concern, the first strawberries of summer are here to be enjoyed during a brief season. A friend shared a photo of them online: plump, sumptuous, red as rubies but more precious due to the way they nourish those who waited through months of dreary weather. Their profusion in California - huge fields along the coast by Watsonville, sold in grocery stores almost the whole year - seems outlandish to someone from Vermont and makes me forget how sweet this fruit can taste when it is only on hand a short while.
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Little Tailor
The Little Tailor of Summer Nights When the day’s humidity has broken and the risen moon makes dew drops glisten like stars across the expanse of your lawn a moth approaches the deck lamp outside your bedroom window, its wings aflutter casting shadows against the wall that form the very pattern from which dreams are sewn.
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A Nice Thing About Vermont in June
is when you go out for a walk at night to the edge of town where the street lights end and you pass by a field that is lit up with a galaxy of countless fireflies.
From the Firefly Galaxy 