How do we live in a world where all things are true? Yet we do. Like a pebble tossed in the ocean, each soul dropped into the world floats slowly, though to us it seems so fast, while a thou- sand things come together, tear apart, prey on each other, grow from the bottom, leap for the light, scatter from sudden dis- turbance. All the while, the soul drifts lower and we resist the drift and trouble ourselves about purpose... Read more

It was in Vancouver at breakfast, before my second cup of coffee. I had a moment, a long moment, before the next task showed its teeth, before the meetings began, and the clink of silverware glistened slightly, and the coffee warmed my throat, and I fell into the well of a silence that was there before I was born. For the moment, the thing that waits behind my tongue dropped way down behind my heart, like an iridescent fish hovering... Read more

I’ve been listening way inside where the Universe rushes up through me like wind through a hole in an old door in a hut near the edge of a cliff. It is an ancient door, the one inside, and an ancient hole in the hut we call the self. I’ve been going there and listening, sitting on the inner edge of everything. There, I’ve heard two irrevocable truths: the truth of life, the very fact of it, how it comes... Read more

It’s early March, the snow almost gone. From my upstairs window, the old ragged oak, leafless. It just happens that the sun is rising right behind its trunk and now the hot star slips between its upper fork, the light splitting everything. Just for this moment, the old naked tree seems to be crucified on the dawn of another spring. And the light has enhanced everything for spilling through the tree. It blinds me as it illumines the world. As... Read more

There is no end to love. We may tear ourselves away or fall off the cliff we thought sacred or even burn the home we dreamt of. But when the rain comes slow at a slant and the pavement turns cold, that place where I keep you and you and all of you—that place opens like a wet fist that can no longer stay closed. And the ache returns. Thank God. The sweet and sudden ache that lets me know... Read more

I’ve been walking the acre of my soul. It’s been so long. And there’s the hill I used to sit on. I’d watch the stars reflect in the river when it was tired of running. I wonder what the view is now. But it takes at least a day to get there and another to sit still in the grass and another to wait for the stars to come out and another for the river to tire. Sure life keeps... Read more

I love this time of day. The only leaves left are small silhouettes against the sky. They will go unnoticed once the world wakes. Yesterday while we were driving, George was setting up the sawhorses outside his shop. As we rolled through Parchment, the sun I so love flooded the intersection and I couldn’t see the light was red. I started through it. You called out and I blamed it on the sun. You questioned my sight. We argued briefly.... Read more

It was the middle of the day. Early September. Light skirting out from under the leaves. I was taking the compost to the edge of the yard when I saw you pinching a pot on the old bench near the bird bath we’d lugged from Albany. Mira was lying in the grass, sun closing her eyes. Something in the quiet light made me realize that we were now in this moment all we’d hoped for. I put the can down... Read more