Tag: sonnet
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Windy Hill
The View from Windy Hill Like most vistas in preserves around here, this one looks east toward San Francisco Bay: surrounded by buildings, spanned by bridges, modern and sparkling in the distance. But if the bench atop this overlook instead faced west, it would view wild land. Conifers along the ridge (amazing how the eye…
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Olympic Valley
The mountain seems firm in its position. By and large, within my life span, it is – assuming no tectonic upheaval or sudden volcanic eruption. I do not see myself so resolute as an ancient sierra, for instance; I am too easily influenced by features in the terrain around me. More akin to rivers, I…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
From the Firefly Galaxy 