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On the second to last day of this year, I stand at the clothesline and pin damp sheets and pillowcases still smelling of lavender. They snap and twist in the cold wind. I’m surrounded by all the dried and dead of the garden. Inside, I watch the bone broth simmer through the glass lid. The bubbles wiggle the chicken feet floating on the surface of the golden liquid. And I’m sick and worn down to just the warp in spots. My eyes burn and my ears are blocked and ringing still with the leaving, that final gift that pricks and throbs like so many tiny shards of glass embedded just under the skin. ...

While the preacher spoke of a world beyond the veil, one half of a mated pair caught his neck in a loop of nylon cord that he or his mate had worked into their nest. He parted the louvers covering the exhaust vent and launched himself through to the outside. I closed the car door, then stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the side of the house. His bloodied head looked as though it was glued to the metal slats, and was twisted at an odd angle to his body dangling below. His mate clung to his bottom half, flapping her wings as if trying to fly for two, swinging them both back and forth. She flitted to an overhanging branch and watched as we freed his body from the vent and the plastic. I buried him in the garden bed along the back fence. ...

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vDH7Ih3YesQ I took another trip to Philly for work last week. I love filming in cities, because the energy/people/sounds are so different from my daily experience. When I got home I noticed that most of my favorite clips were of some mode of transportation or other (with the exception of the part where I try to get my colleague Joy on camera and hilarity ensues), and so I combined them into one short little movie that makes me smile (and laugh at that silly part) every time I watch it.

Clusters of red and white brittlegills dotted the path through the back woods. Can’t know for sure which species, there are over 750 in the genus. But if there is any poetry in happenstance, then surely my path was strewn with Russula sanguinaria, bloody brittlegill, the deep, rich red of a life poured out at your feet.

We were alone for the afternoon, and so we walked around the lake, slowly, savoring the warmth of that Indian summer day. She patiently waited for me each time I stopped to take another, and another, and another. We watched flying creatures of all kinds enjoy a large patch of asters (I’d never before seen a Buckeye butterfly). Just as I was zooming in on the center of her web, a spotted orbweaver zipped past my lens and encased a newly-caught fly in a death cocoon, and I felt pity and awe and guilt in equal measure.

At work or church I would say that the view was breathtaking, that the climb was invigorating, that watching the sun rise over blue mountains was moving, and I would mean every word. But what I would whisper to you in the quiet is this: …she reclined like a queen on a cushion of stone and watched birds of prey circling beneath her… ...

I saw your ghost standing at the top of the steps last night. (your dark hair reflected the beams of that hunter’s moon) You looked down, head tilted, smiling. You walked a few slow paces, stopped. I watched you move from the corner of my eye but did not turn to face you. My ears filled with the roar of my own heart’s blood and I heard nothing else. ...

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