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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Comet Hyakutake
The Rutland Herald had told us we might see it with our naked eyes assuming there were no clouds and the moon was not shining. We were teenagers riding the school bus home from a festival. The spring night was cold, reminiscent of winter. Huddled near the back, we spoke about music we played that day. Conversation was rich with our youthful excitement. We spoke about plans for the future, colleges we would attend parties we had attended girls, boys, parents, teachers. For no reason I can remember there was a lull. We were silent for a few minutes. My friend craned his neck to look outside at the passing fields at the sky star-strewn cloudless... "There it is, I see it!" He shouted. We followed his gaze along the trajectory he indicated with his finger thrust against a chilly window and saw the comet: a milky swath, conical, streaking above us. Radiant as other celestial bodies its head was bigger than Venus; its dusty tail, glowing extended across the galaxy. I was sure it was moving far more quickly than we were yet it seemed motionless appearing stationary among the constellations. We were quiet again before talking anymore stunned perhaps grateful to have shared this moment of awe this unanticipated miracle that we had witnessed an otherworldly being in angelic flight its cosmic destination far less certain than our own. -
Farmers’ Market
There is no map of the Farmers’ Market. Every Saturday, the arrangement of stalls is different, so you need to figure out where Radical Roots sells baby carrots; you must search again for where Evening Song displays arugula and pea shoot greens, where Three Bears Bakery has ciabatta, where Whaleback Vineyard offers apple wine. Some would call this an opportunity for a planner, or a cartographer, to help shoppers locate the goods they seek - but I value the weekly change in landscape, how the path you choose through the vendors lets you discover for yourself a prized find.
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Pig on the Loose
Pig on the Loose at Night They were on their way home from a concert in Middlebury, Vermont after dark, when a strange phantom materialized at the outer reach of the car’s headlights. As it approached in the opposite lane, the ghostly form was soon revealed to be a huge sow trotting north on Route 7 with a very worried look on her face. A pig on the loose raises some questions - especially one of her size and gait on the run at night, nowhere near a farm. But she went past them without incident and they firmly agreed with each other that she might want a few answers herself. -
His Oldest Hen
He built a chicken wire fence four feet tall to surround the run outside their coop and still his oldest hen had figured out how to escape from the rest of the flock. This went on for weeks without explanation - or without any real cause for concern, because she always came back before dark to roost with her sisters through the night. Out for a walk on his land one day he almost stepped in a cache of ten eggs nestled by the foot of a maple tree. As he gathered them, he smiled to himself at the notion of that broody dame having trysts in the woods with a wild fowl. -
Last Words
The tiny lamp on my nightstand with its brushed aluminum base and yellowed shade covered in dust spreads light all over my bedroom. It lends a glow to each wall spills lumens on the carpeted floor and makes shadows evaporate from the corners of the ceiling. Tucked away on a shelf below rests a draft of my dad’s last words read aloud at his memorial by a dear family friend. I received a copy of them in the mail on a rainy day which smudged a bit of the text as though it had been written in ash. When I switch on my bedside lamp I like to think it draws power from those words, letting its bulb shine even if the cord were unplugged.
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Root Beer
Lips pursed around the straw for the first sip, my gullet floods with bubbles and sugar. That sassafras-flavored beverage also brings me a dose of caffeine. A few slurps later, I feel effervescent. Like an ice-cold soft drink in a plastic cup, my elevated mind begins to fizz. Thoughts occur unbidden. Ideas burst. It is a pleasant sensation - a taste of how life was going five years ago, before mood stabilizers slowed me down. Now my internal world is more sedate: a stoneware mug half full of tap water, a lemon wedge garnishes the rim. -
Change
When the hammer strikes against a metal sheet and leaves its mark on the tranquil flatness now forever changed sculpted into a new shape so it is with certain events and the impact they have on life such as the sudden loss of someone close - not like a rock thrown in a pond whose surface resumes a pristine stillness once all the ripples have spread to the shore but more like a piece of steel bent around an anvil blow after blow.
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Snow Geese
Between moves, going through boxes of stuff, discerning what I want to bring with me from what I am ready to throw away, I discovered some fragments of poems I began during my first marriage. There is a piece from at least ten years ago about a week we spent in winter at my former in-laws’ house in Delaware. One day I heard a tremendous honking noise coming from outside, at a great distance. I stepped into the yard, looked up, and saw hundreds of snow geese flying overhead, en route to Bombay Hook Wildlife Refuge where each year they rest on their migration. A few dozen flew opposite the rest. Most turned around with the larger skein. Some did not, as if they could reverse the seasons to their nesting grounds in spring. The pain of divorce devastated me. For a time, I was bitter and withdrawn, unable to accept an era was over. Now, I can recall moments of contentment from this past partnership, before there was discord and betrayal, while aware I am better off in my new marriage. Similar to that vast flock moving on with such determination, I can tell the direction forward. But different from them who mate for life and always go back to where they hatched their eggs, I know these poems I found are remnants of a place I will not return.
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Floating Pearls
The night sky over SFO is bejeweled with the landing lights of many jet planes on descent, all of them carefully lined up one by one in a precious strand suspended above the runway like a necklace of floating pearls.
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After the Election
Hiking After the Election (November, 2016) Hiking Castillero Trail in autumn, the early afternoon sun low enough even pebbles underfoot cast shadows beside my own along the dusty path, I feel surprised how green the landscape is: coast live oak and madrone well-endowed with lush foliage on all their branches, grassy hills verdant from this morning's dew. After the election, this turn of season in a world unconcerned with folly is no small comfort; change is on its way for these plants who flourish despite the darkness growing around them.
From the Firefly Galaxy 