The daffodils’ optimism unsettles me, contradicts the updates from my digital feed. Don’t they know what I know? If they did, they might wear a muddier hue.

To say nothing of the peonies—those stalwarts with their un-wrackable nerve. Just this morning, I found them upright and glistening where once there was nothing but hard, nubby ground. What folly to stand there, as though they could imagine a future afternoon in bloom.

And that’s not all.

This confederacy of resilience honors no boundaries. It opens, flies, builds wherever it wants to, blending genres of melodies wherever it goes: the double-time jazz of Northern flickers, sentimental hums of mourning doves; flirtatious, longing calls of the red-winged blackbird, all to the backdrop of song sparrow divas throating themselves into a frenzy on still-bare limbs. Every morning a cascade of fortitude tumbling down.

The spring equinox came for a visit, repositioned the slats on the blinds, and altered the angle and timeline of the light. But why? Why bother in these current times? I reach into my pocket and search for a rain check I can hand over to the season. Can’t find one.

I devise escape tactics—passive evenings, streaming on the too-soft sofa. Online shopping sprees. I put on noise cancelling headphones and dare this resilience to get past. I do anything I can think of to avoid witnessing the newborn coo of possibility. But the layers of this particular style of enthusiasm are too well engineered.

Even dusk is up for the challenge of carrying on with the mission. As if on cue, the pond’s resident frogs wake up, crawl out of the muck and sit on jagged mossy rocks. They open their globular eyes and throttle out their plea.

The dirt stirs.

The stars re-arrange themselves, and do not die in doing so.

What does this worn world know that I don’t know?

-Thank you for reading.

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On the Nature of Sublimation

To leap 
from the dark,
from the ribboning
galactic pulse,
and land
in feathered strands
across a leaf-drenched floor,
skipping the liquid 
body's limits 
altogether,

to refine
what the mind
has burned for worse 
and for wear, 

to find us,
born 
not as accidents
but artifacts 
of the sublime

in time 
reversing back 
from bone to vapor
from Why? to when...

in that last breath
becoming stars again.
 

01.22.2026

Thank you for reading.

{| AC

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Tuesday

It’s getting late.

On the sofa next to me, The Dog is snoring. I’ll need to wake him up for our morning walk or I’ll run out of time for a shower.

The distance to the mailbox and back is only a mile, but these days it feels more like five. The Dog, though loyal, walks so slow now, I have to pad my morning ritual with extra minutes. We don’t converse much on the first half of the journey. We start and stop. We assess. He smells and I listen. This week, the Bewick’s Wrens have begun singing again, flicks from the Northern Flickers are echoing from the tops of the alders.

It’s getting late in the month of February, and the birds know it.

After too many stops for my taste, The Dog and I finally arrive at the mailbox. He wants to continue on, down the road for...who knows how long. One of these mornings, when I have nothing to do, I’ll let him keep walking and see if he ever decides to turn around. But I don’t have time today.

I tug on the leash to turn him around. He looks at me, as if to say: You’re not serious?

I am serious.

“Some of us have things to do today,” I say.

He listens, knows what I have said, but does not acknowledge my statement. His brows furrow. I tug on the leash again. He bears down a little but finally relents when I encourage him with an excited tone—as if I am aware of something amazing up ahead on the road we just walked down. Thirteen human years and a tumor on the left adrenal gland will slow a dog down. Even a great one.

On the half mile return back up, The Dog somehow walks even slower than he did on the way down. I slow my steps to match his lower gear, to no avail. When I decelerate, he decelerates further. This glacial pace aggravates my sense of movement, my sense of an hour. If we continue slowing down, we’ll start going back in time.

“You must be able to walk faster than this!” I plead with him.

There is no response—not even a glance up. He is completely ignoring me now. My Beloved insists that The Dog doesn’t comprehend what I’m saying, but all three of us know that’s not true.

After we move a few feet, The Dog takes up a fascination with a one inch patch of the ground. He nuzzles his nose into the forest floor, and I can tell he won’t raise his head until he gets to the bottom of whatever recently occurred there.

It is getting late, and we have at least a quarter mile to go.

While The Dog continues his investigation, I talk myself out of getting irritated. I say to myself, Take advantage of the pause to look for what’s going on out here. I notice the tiny leaf-buds jutting out of the ends of long, spindly salmonberry branches. Behind them, stoic elders are releasing the first fountains of their bright green leaves. The color looks almost neon next to the ruddy dark of their thick branches. So soon? I say out loud. It wasn’t that long ago the understory donated their entire summer bounty to the worms.

When we finally make it back to the house, I notice that the peonies are offering gleaming red, one-inch buds at the feet of last year’s stalks. It looks as if they have painted their toenails. I stop and touch them. In reverence. In disbelief. So soon?

So soon. And yet, it is getting even later.

Wednesday

“Two? Or three?

—“Two.”

“Three? Or four?”

—“Can I see three again?”

“Of course.”

—“Three.”

This might seem like an eye exam, as if there are no wrong answers, but I’m not so sure. Is there a pattern? Do my overly-confident answers betray an internal contraction because that would explain a lot about my life. Dr. Campbell is so professional, so personable, he would never say one way or the other.

I know he is a skier so I ask if he’s watching the Olympics.

“Yes, but every time I turn it on it’s curling.”

I’m about to say how much I love to watch curling; how, in my mind, curling is second in line in terms of badassery only to the biathlon, which, as a sport, is Absolute Badassery.

He smiles and I focus on his white-blue teeth, “Remember the pandemic, when the only thing on television was cornhole?”

I don’t remember this.

“Now about your dry eyes,” he says. “I don’t think we’ve ever done a test to see how well your eyes are producing tears.”

Do I need a test for this? I am a good crier. Been doing it all my life. But yes, let’s do this because my eyes are excruciatingly dry, and enough so that I even mention it to him, which is unlike me.

I might cry well but I complain terribly.

Dr. Campbell opens a drawer and pulls out a small envelope. He opens it to reveal two small, thin paper strips, explaining that he’ll put one in each eye for five minutes.

I’m wondering what else Dr. Campbell has in that drawer. Does he have any test strips to measure the human capacity to feel compassion? Those could be useful. We need to dole those tests out to people running the show on this planet.

After putting another mysterious liquid in my eyes, Dr. Campbell inserts one strip in the left eye, the other in the right. “This will tell us the amount of moisture each eye’s tear duct is producing. There’s a scale up to 20mm, with 15 being average and healthy.”

He tells me to close my eyes and “daydream for the next five minutes.”

I should get an A++ on this test.

The timer rings. Five minutes are over, and unless I have misunderstood, I don’t feel any tears in my eyes. Five minutes pass quickly when you’re daydreaming. I need to remember this tomorrow morning when I’m walking The Dog.

Dr. Campbell comes over to the chair to remove the thin white strips.

“Wow,” he says, removing them. “Your left eye produced 1mm and your right, 0.”

I hear the numbers, and I’m not sure I understand them.

“Do you mean, I am literally out of tears?” I ask?

“Well, the test has verified what you’re feeling. That much is certain.”

Thursday

The Dog and I walk slowly, tearlessly down to the mailbox.

How can I be out of tears? I’m going to need them. It’s getting late in my life; it’s getting late on the World Clock. I’m going to need tears of empathy, strength, resolve to face how fast humanity is undergoing—whatever this is that’s happening right now.

The Dog is keeping up a decent clip today. I thank him for it.

At the mailbox, he doesn’t argue with my tug to turn around. Again, a good clip on the way back. Again, I thank him. As we approach the entrance to the trail, I wait for him to veer left, to avoid it, as he usually does, but he’s caught scent of a coyote so he picks up his pace and leads me down the path. Now we are walking at my preferred speed—Manhattan style.

On the trail, the Christmas ornaments are still hanging on the trees. I haven’t had the heart to remove them—the gift of their bright red burst cheers me up. It’s getting too late to leave them, but maybe just one more weekend.

The Dog tugs at the leash, and wants to lead me down Victoria Lane, but I force him to turn left up Paw Print Path.

“Some of us have jobs,” I tell him. “Unlike yourself, I don’t get to sit on the sofa all day.”

In his mind, sleeping on the sofa is his job.

At ‘The Lookout’ The Dog pauses, lays down. That coyote tracking wore him out. It’s getting late, but I let him lay there, sniffing the air for a while. I remember what the vet said to me last August, after he found the tumor: “Enjoy the time you have with him”

It’s quite likely this will be the last spring with The Dog. My eyes well up thinking about it.

So, I’m not entirely out of tears.

I drop the leash and let him lay down. His nostrils pulse. He looks happy.

It’s getting late but I still have time.

-Thank you for reading.

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Wishing warmth and safety to all of you, wherever you are.

Looking east across Saratoga Passage. The crackling sound at the end is from a bird—what looked like a Bufflehead—taking off from the water.

Thank you for watching.

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This made me wonder what it means for us to embody a mostly liquid form living on a mostly liquid planet, while sublimation and deposition occurs all around us, has done so before we arrived, and will continue to when we are gone.

On the Nature of Sublimation

To leap 
from the dark,
from the ribboning
galactic pulse,
and land
in feathered strands
across a leaf-drenched floor,
skipping the liquid 
body's limits 
altogether,

to refine
what the mind
has burned for worse 
and for wear, 

to find us,
born 
not as accidents
but artifacts 
of the sublime

in time 
reversing back 
from bone to vapor
from Why? to when...

in that last breath
becoming stars again.
 

01.22.2026

Thank you for reading.

{| AC

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No short-lived party favor, this misnamed bloom puts its little toe across the threshold in November, and doesn’t exit the building until July. A spark in the dark of winter, the hellebore is sometimes referred to as the Christmas or Lenten rose, but this fine specimen has nothing in common with the rose. Not genetically nor spiritually.

Deer won’t go near it. Ravenous rabbits wrinkle their noses in its general direction. I wouldn’t consider my garden complete without it.

Thank you for reading.

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During the time it took me to figure out I only posted today’s one minute video to Notes, the Aurora Borealis swung by. So, some bonus photos.

I like to think tonight’s light show was caused by David Lynch celebrating his birthday wherever he is.

Thank you for reading.

{|AC

Afternoon, at the foot of the harbor.

We have made it past the 50 yard line of this impossibly long month.

One of these years I will spend a January in the southern hemisphere. They simply must have it better on the “bottom” half of the globe this time of year.

This week is my birthday week. And while I am full of intention to write a magnificent post to commemorate the occasion, the words are swirling but not landing. I have four draft posts in progress, multiple notes with ideas, and six poem stubs that I have been arm wrestling with for weeks.

It’s times like these I fall back into the soft cushion of imagery.

And so, this week I will share a one minute video every day of something more marvelous than words: the breath of the living world.

-Angela

Thank you for reading.

{| AC

Another Cyber Monday has come.

Emerging from the darkness, from the great beyond, it hurtles toward the earth and lands in the form of notifications, emails and text messages.

Buy two, get one free!
40% off all sale items!
Free shipping sitewide!

The bombardment of offers requires me to spend a great number of minutes bulk deleting messages from my device. I’m wondering what box I did not uncheck recently that has resulted in all these emails. The bright side to this Monday morning situation is that I won’t have time to read the news which is a different kind of bombardment altogether.

Being a Monday, I’ll need to drive to the office. Once there I turn on every available light, which makes a difference but not quite enough of a difference. It’s only 9 AM but I can sense it’s going to be one of those days that remains stuck in an endless state of dawn’s early light.

By 10:30 AM I’m starving. All that sitting on the sofa watching movies over the long Thanksgiving weekend has made me endlessly hungry. Luckily, the local grocery store is a three minute walk from my office.

At the entrance, I make a concerted effort to ignore the seasonal merchandise. I think: If I don’t lay eyes on the green and red bows, the ribbons and gift boxes, then I won’t have to admit to myself that I’m hosting Christmas in a mere 19 days.

I quicken my step, pass the checkout stands and head to the back of the where the fruits and vegetables live.

Along the way I hear music. Unmistakable notes of Christmas vibes swirling around the ceiling. Cumulonimbus sounds: puffy, but with an inner more threatening layer, poised and ready to drench me in waves of clamoring bells, brassy tambourines. I stop for a moment, then go on. I can handle this. Years ago, I built up a tolerance for this very thing.

With my hand cart full, I head to the checkout stand. The familiar young woman expertly scans what I’ve managed to hunt and gather for today’s lunch: pre-washed arugula, asleep in its plastic coffin, a tub of cottage cheese, deli-prepared roasted tomatoes, and a bag of walnuts from the bulk foods section.

“Do you know the number for these?” she asks as she holds up the walnuts.

“747,” I say.

I never forget the walnut’s bin # because 747 happens to be same number as the best Boeing plane ever built. Arguably, the best airplane ever built by any company: The Queen of the Skies.

She punches in the number, and then reveals the total. A piece of plastic is tapped on a screen followed by a beep, which means I’m good to go. I get to eat today. As my receipt bursts out of its little tank, I ask her, “How are you holding up with the Christmas music?”

This is my first time out in public since Thanksgiving, but I know how this goes. The Holiday Music Soundtrack is turned on the day after Thanksgiving and stays on its infinite loop until closing time on December 31st.

She smiles. I’ve chatted with her dozens of times, but I’ve never seen her smile.

“You know, I was just wondering: When am I going to get sick of this?”

“Couple more days,” I said.

She laughs.

“I worked at a bookstore during Christmas for six years,” I tell her. “That was a long time ago, but I still can’t listen to The Nutcracker.”

A week goes by and I realize I won’t be able to ignore Christmas music altogether this year. The family gathering will need a background soundtrack in case we run out of things to say to each other. I add “Christmas playlist” to my Hosting To-Do list. Then forget about it for another week.

Saturday night.

I pour myself a glass of red wine and sit down in my favorite swivel chair. Phone in hand, I set out to create a holiday playlist. I think about where to begin. There are the must-haves: Andy Williams, Vince Guaraldi, Bing Crosby, Eartha Kitt, Elvis. I leave Tchaikovsky on the injured reserve list. Maybe he’ll recover. Maybe I’ll recover. But for now, he’s off the team.

I get acquainted with a pre-fabricated playlist meant for just this purpose. While scrolling through the titles I rediscover Whitney Houston’s version of Do You Hear What I Hear from the 1987 compilation album “A Very Special Christmas.” How had I forgotten about it? It’s a fantastic rendition of a classic, and as she did with The Star Spangled Banner, Houston finds new ways to open up the sonic dynamics of an otherwise fairly straight-laced tune.

I listen to the track twice. On second listen, I come to the conclusion that the only thing wrong with Houston’s version is that she leaves out the first verse. As everybody knows, the night wind was the first to pass on the news about The Child. Cutting out the first verse not only removes an integral part of the story—that the natural world has intel to pass on—it also cuts short one of the best songs on the album.

I pause adding more songs to the playlist in order to research whether a more complete version of Houston’s Do You Hear What I Hear exists. As happens to many good Saturday nights spent alone with a connected device and no invitation to respond to, I end up falling deep down the pit of alluring search result suggestions. There might be only 12 days of Christmas, but there’s an endless number of hours of YouTube content.

While wandering in the pit of results, I wonder if there’s an equally compelling version of Do You Hear What I Hear that I’ve not heard before. I check out Robert Goulet’s. I take no issue with it, but it’s not what I’m after. I skip Josh Groban while asking myself: is that the guy with a really decent voice, or am I confusing him with Michael Bublé? I get the two mixed up. Carrie Underwood’s take is very good, especially the country-spiced guitar fills that flirt lightly with the blues as good country music must inevitably do. Bing Crosby does his Bing Thing, which is much better than most, but I plan to save his playlist slot for White Christmas which is nothing short of sentimental perfection.

I stumble upon a Pentatonix offer which does a remix version centering on Houston’s, but with a gossamer-like harmonic overlay. It’s got legs and punch, but it’s not a contender to top her original version.

By now it’s 12:45 AM and my playlist is tragically thin. I’m so tired I go back to Josh Groban and notice his version features a group called ‘The War and the Treaty’ which I’ve never heard of.

And this is when the night wind tells me something I did not know. For not only does their version include all the verses, but from a musical stand-point it’s the most satisfying version I’ve come across. It’s a little bit gospel, a little bit country. It’s a bluesy, wonderfully arranged interpretation of a song that at its heart hopes for a way forward at at time when it felt like there might not be any future to hope for.

Composed in October 1962 by husband and wife Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne, Do You Hear What I Hear was, in part, a response to the frightening realities of the Cuban missile crisis. While the literal story recounts the bible’s version of the birth of Christ it is also a song that pleads for the end of violence. That the Groban/War & Treaty version conveys the urgency of that plea while still imbuing the music with a little bit of feel-good funkiness is not contradictory.

There is no way to hope for the end of violence without maintaining a capacity to feel the power of joy.

By 1:15 AM, I had only six songs on my playlist, but for once, all that time spent looking for something on my device felt worthwhile.

Here’s to a new season filled with kindness, inspiring discoveries and kick-ass playlists.

Thank you for reading.

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For those of you who have been with me this last year, first of all Thank You! And if you were wondering, I did keep the Peace on Earth ornament up on the mantle all year. Now accompanied by Jupiter.

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Even though time has shifted back an hour, it is still too dark in the morning to see. Mid-autumn air cools the bare floors. My feet are the first to learn the difference between October and November.

I turn on the closet light, ruffle through the sock drawer. The sight is sad indeed. Dismal yarns haphazardly positioned. Worn out toes, dirty insteps; dog-hair threaded into the soles. Sad solitaires, unpaired. ‘Where did your mate go?’ I ask the gray, athletic one. No answer. This singleton is utterly demoralized.

I shut the drawer, and put on my slippers. There’s no denying the current reality: the state of my sock union is not strong.

No matter!

I have a credit card and an internet connection. There’s no modern problem I can’t solve with these tools. Five minutes later, twelve new pairs of socks are on their way to my house in the woods.

Delivery Day

There’s no doubt the socks are arriving soon. I know this for certain because my phone can’t keep a secret. It tells me there will be a package today, who sent it, and what is inside.

I remind myself never to tell my phone anything I wouldn’t want everyone to know within a matter of hours.

In the afternoon, the socks arrive. I unwrap the envelope and find them in their see-through sleeping bags, resting on individual little hangers. These plastic sock hangers were useful once, when people went to department stores and perused multiple sock options hanging on the wall. This is back when there was a considerable preference for touching clothes before buying them.

I release the socks from their sleeping bags, and consider the hangers again. At first, I am annoyed that I’ll need to remove each pair of socks from their hanger. But then I feel my mother in the room with me.

The death of someone you love leaves you alone with only what you’re able to remember about them. At first, their absence is so raw, each recollection feels like lemon juice on an open wound. The grandest moments flood first: birthdays, celebrations, anniversaries. Then time moves you forward, and it’s the smallest, most random of acts that come, and at the most unexpected times.

I unwrap the socks, cut off the tags, attached by those little white plastic needles that have certainly suffocated more than one small house pet after they find them on the floor. I carefully remove the sock hanger. Look at it. Twist the short end behind the long end. And within a few short minutes, I’m looking at a murder of treble clefs adorning the pile of new socks.

My mother used to do this—mold the sock hangers into treble clefs. She couldn’t help herself. And now, neither can I.

Phase One: Unwrap the Socks:

Phase Two: Separate Hanger from the Socks:

Phase Three: Rotate Hanger to First Position:

Phase Four: Twist One Leg Under the Other:

Then sit in a comfortable chair and enjoy your treble clef.

Thank you for reading.

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Sleepwalkers

Those who fear the dead   
have certainly not met   
the living.  
 
Nothing scares   
the bejesus out of me  
more than bumping into  
one of those 
sugared-up bags  
all spill, no fulfill  

costumed out   
for a customary life   
as they walk by  
dim-lamped  
ignoring the glory   
of another dissolving hour 
rushing to roulette themselves   
on the carousel of want

     never enough,  

		then gone 
			and nevermore.  
 

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Forgiven

When 
I walked 
away from 
the frantic doom
of the day's darkness 
and hard-weighted chaos 
of what cannot be controlled, 
of all that is easy to blame
I renamed the sky, ‘Forgiven’ and 
watched it turn the afternoon into gold. 

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Distinction

It is almost impossible to tell one thing from another.  
For instance, swans.  

To the early morning’s eye, simply white over white; 
scattered chalk dusting the cusp of a lake.  

No thrill of the cardinal’s dragon fruit feathers.  
No maverick flight of spring's deft swallow. 
 
No sparrow song ear worming its way unscathed.
Until fog's lift delivers a treble clef neck, a gift, 

this proud throat unscarved. Silent, plain bird
seen today, and I am suddenly not the same.  

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I have come to Ireland unwillingly. When my manager, Pauline, asked me eight months ago if I could go, I said “Yes, I can go.” And I could, so there was no other answer to give. I’ll go, I told myself. To support the team, to see another part of Ireland I’ve not been to before. I will go. Because who would say no to a free trip to Ireland? Still, I was reluctant and not looking forward to it. Ten days away from an old dog with a tumor is a long time to be gone. I would surely miss home, and a solid chunk of September light in the Pacific Northwest. There was a very real risk I could lose my all-time Wordle winning streak while skipping half a day on the way to Europe. But I was able to go, so I said yes.

I have come to Ireland without wanting anything from Ireland. Except that is not entirely true. If you fancy yourself a writer, even a mediocre one, you come to Ireland expecting to magically absorb the outrageous talent of Irish writers, just by stepping on Irish soil. You imagine that the lushness of those green hills and the resolve of the marbled rocks will rainbow their way into your body through your teary eyeballs, and settle somewhere inside your brain and take over your pale wrist so that you can never write a bad poem again.

I have come to Ireland forgetting my dreams. Usually my dreams are cinematic dramas I can replay the moment I wake up. These last three days I only remember the presence of a person nearby. Sometimes it’s my mother or my father—never together. I wish they would speak to me but they don’t. They are simply present, lips sealed. They aren’t angry. Or sad. Thank God. Finally, now, neither one of them are sad.

I have come to Connemara to go on a walk. A walk with a well-known poet, leading 97 people down a path set down in a valley. Pilgrims, all. Seeking. The poet leads the walk, his distinctive gait setting a quick pace. I could keep up but I fall back to the rear to make sure all the pilgrims are ok. I fall back an hour into the walk after Pauline had to take four people back to the car due to exhaustion. “I literally found them laying down on the ground.” She texts me, with a picture. She wasn’t exaggerating. “I’ll stay back and make sure we don’t lose anyone else,” I text her back.

To stay back I have to walk slower than my natural pace. At times I pick up speed, pass a handful of pilgrims walking in line, and make conversation with someone. I try to get a glimpse of where we’re headed but I have no idea where this walk is leading to. I’m thinking there must be a ridge we go to and then a view of the ocean, but there’s no way to know. After some small talk, and admitting to whoever asks that I don’t know where we’re going, I slow down and go back to the rear. This reminds me of hiking with my previous dog, George, the way he would go ahead on the trail in front of us, then trot back and to make sure we were still walking. If we walked five miles, George walked at least eight with the extra distance required to lead and fall back, over and over.

Out here, the sheep look just as they do in all the photographs you’ve seen of Ireland. The hills too, and the rivers and the stone walls. But the light is spectacular — it can’t be photographed. It moves too fast to sit for a portrait. Still, I take phone photos, just to try and explain it to someone.

Every once in a while, when I’m clearly the last one I stop and let the wind howl around my ears. I’m old enough now to realize that I might never get here again. So I stand and look in every direction, make an effort to memorize the stanzas of the landscape. Years ago, there were business trips to foreign cities when I spent too much time in my hotel room. All those cities where the bulk of my memories of them is reduced to stiff bed sheets and terrible in-room coffee.

Standing still, here in Connemara, is a privilege. One of many given to me. As a teenager, I worried about my good fortune, which even then I understood was better than most. I confessed this to my father, and told him that it didn’t seem fair that my life was so easy, that I had so much. How does it happen that I was given abilities and opportunities, when other people had so little? How was this possible? How was it fair? My father looked at me and said, “It isn’t fair, which is why you have a responsibility to be generous and compassionate.”

I’ve fallen far enough behind now that I need to walk at my usual pace to catch up with the last person, a young, very tall and thin woman walking while reading a poem from one of the poet’s own books. She’s walking very slowly. I recognize the book but I don’t know which poem she’s reading, and I don’t ask her. She looks entirely captivated by the words she’s reading. I watch her carefully. The ground is uneven and soggy in patches. I would hate to see her tripped up by poetry. But then again, maybe that’s why we’re all here.

I pass her and two other people, counting in my head (three behind me) and then a few more (five behind me) until I set my pace to walk with a woman and her daughter. They ask me how long the walk is, but I have no idea. No one who knows anything about this walk is anywhere near us. They’re all up ahead.

I fall back again, letting the five people once behind me go ahead of me. I text Pauline to say we’re two hours in to this walk and I don’t know when we’re turning around. At this rate, we won’t be back in time for dinner. I type: “You might want to make a contingency plan so these walkers can eat.” She curses in acronym. To make a contingency plan, Pauline will have to work with Anne-Marie, the No Bullshit Irish woman running the show at the hotel. Anne-Marie is a force of nature. Everyone should work for someone like Anne-Marie at least once in their lives so they can learn first-hand what raw competency looks like in action. Anne-Marie will not like that the poet has gone off-script, and Pauline knows it.

The wind is making me tired and thirsty. Speaking out loud, I make a crude joke about sheep and what I would do for a beer right now. I laugh. It’s important to laugh at your own jokes so that other people will know the jokes are funny. But no one can hear my laugh or my off-color sheep jokes. The wind is covering my tracks.

In Connemara I am following the pilgrims who are following the poet. Because who would not be willing to follow him? Who would not make an attempt to know the unknowable? Then again, I acknowledge there are many uncurious people, at home, drinking terrible coffee. I have been one of those people on occasion.

Three hours in. No one is turning around, and I have to hope the pilgrims in front of me have been following someone who was following someone who was following the poet. The road never forked, and we crossed the river a while back so we must be on the right path. Steak. Risotto. A martini. Honeycrisp apples. Don’t think about food. Just keep walking.

I dread the return as we’ll be walking into the wind, which is not insignificant. There’s an older couple who are now last in the group. The woman is starting to walk very slowly. She isn’t complaining but I can sense how tired she is, and her husband will not leave her side.

My phone dings and vibrates in my back pocket. I think that’s What’s App — I never use it. Someone added me to group chat against my wishes. Another colleague, recovering from a recent cold back at the hotel is writing to relay how he has worked out how to get a headcount of vegetarians for the packed lunches we’ll need tomorrow. “Sounds good. We are still walking. We’re not going to make it back for dinner,” I reply.

He’s still fairly sick so is maybe not picking up on my aggressive text-tone. He asks how many people are on the walk. I write there are 92 left because Pauline had to take four people back who couldn’t go on. I continue, write that I’m staying in the back to make sure everyone else is ok. “I don’t know how long this walk is.” I write, hoping this will prompt an answer from the four people in this What’s App group that do know how long this walk is.

Finally, I ask: “Are the buses picking us up somewhere other than where they dropped us off?”

“Ah, yes. It’s a one-way walk,” my recovering colleague declares. This is useful information that would have been helpful two hours ago.

I think of The Dog. He would love this walk. This is his kind of walk: one way.

I walk a little faster, knowing we must be getting close to the end, and that dinner will be available after all. Look around, remember this. Stop texting and breathe. I keep walking and at the four hour mark take note that the muse has not visited me this entire time I’ve been in Ireland. Neither Yeats nor Heaney nor Joyce have whispered a damn thing in my ear. It’s a disappointing feature of my life that I can’t will genius to take hold of me. I can’t harness inspiration on command. I can only summon compassion and generosity. I have those at my disposal whenever they are needed.

The next ding from What’s App is from a third colleague, letting me to turn right when I come to the road and head to the lodge where the buses will be waiting for the last of us. With ten minutes left to go, there’s a sudden cascade of information pouring through this chat. I’m too thirsty to be angry. “Yes, I see people turning up ahead,” I respond.

The older couple turns onto the road with four or five people ahead of them. The sun has broken free glaring the road ahead. From the right, a car horn beeps multiple times, pulling out from a gravel road leading to a small white house. I think at first the car is backing up to the road, but then two white horses run past the car, out onto the road, across the road and onto the hill overlooking the lake. There’s a silver hole in the sky where the sun is leaking out. It’s impossibly beautiful. I have never seen anything so arresting as those two white horses, running across the road onto the green hill. Only the last handful of us pilgrims get to see this. Everyone else is already on the bus.

I have come to the West of Ireland to go on a walk and not know where I am going. I have come here not knowing yet that I am not looking for anything. I have come here only to look.

Thank you for reading.

{|AC

Last Week of Camp

Giving up its green ghost, the parade field 
lays down, yellowed and wind-warped,  
prepped at last for our unsocked feet 

to thread our toes through summered blades.    
Late August, and last night’s moon still swells,  
grows fuller somehow, toboggans down the caverns  

of our blood subdued only by the sugar-high  
of time we don’t yet know we are already losing as  
we take a walk on the old fort’s grounds— 

past the barracks where someone blasts Synchronicity, 
past the office - the camp secretary typing out 
tonight’s edition of The Flagler Foghorn in Bolero rhythms -  

past the chapel posing now as a symphony hall, 
past the wooden huts where we hear this year’s 
concert mistress practicing her solo again and again 

as a low voice implores her: Adagio! ... Adagio!   
while we snicker and sneak into the PROHIBITED AREA  
walk on toward the west beach, silently daring  

the park’s ranger to find us, stopping only once to pick  
stubborn apples from the highest branches we can reach  
and are relieved to find they are not ready yet.   

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I challenge myself to take a walk on the beach without picking up stones. Wave-smoothed and sun-speckled, each one is as alluring as a polished gemstone laid down on black velvet cloth. I tell myself to take a walk without pilfering anything. Just one walk. But this is difficult. Every morning offers a new collection, richly hued and freshly bathed in fog-lit brine. Earthbound iridescence.

Just minutes in, I fail the challenge, put a stone in my pocket. Then another and another—this last one a buttercream yellow. With the quantity of plunder I’ve amassed, you might think I will take anything solid. But I do have standards. I don’t grab the drab, gray stones, or those still jagged and shapeless, as if they were recently chipped off a block. No. Only the smoothest will do. I seek out the ovals and egg shapes, and when especially lucky (which has been only once) the heart shaped. Earlier in the week I was fooled into believing I had found a perfect sphere-shaped stone, only to discover it was man-made detritus – the former inner core of an unidentifiable sports ball.

Within the confines of my pockets, my fingers continue smoothing the rocks. For the other 51 weeks of the year, I live bounded by conifer dust, lightly spiked needles, sappy cones, and mushroom spores. My skin isn’t used to this particular ratio of air, water and salt, but the novelty makes it even more appealing to keep rubbing down the stones, which, even after a wash in shallow tide waves, are still coated in a fine sandy grit. I massage them until my fingers are sticky with the remnants of their baptism.

I walk on, over streams of tendrilled seaweed, strewn about like strands of solidified root beer. Low tide releases a new batch of mollusks. Fresh from their ancestral home, they are pearled and pinkish in color. A few are painted in daring purples or mid-heaven blues, their two halves open but still joined together like a set of thirsty lungs. Chitons, limpets, and other sea snails I have yet to learn the names for confetti the wet sand. This buffet lures the chatty gulls, stately Herons, crafty Osprey, and bad ass Bald Eagles. Closer to the bluff are the shells which stormed this beach days ago, now serenely painted in the shade of White Dove.

My pockets are full and The Dog is getting tired. Even though he is slowing down, I have to force him to turn around. He doesn’t want to. He would keep walking forward if I let him. His mind believes he can keep this same trajectory and somehow get back home without ever looking back. I know what this feels like. I know what it means to believe this.

My pockets are full and I worry there will be consequences: a Day of Reckoning. What if, in the afterlife, I am forced to carry the weight of all the stones and shells and driftwood and glass I took from the beach throughout my time on earth? “I only borrowed them,” I’ll say.

This is the last morning, and as The Dog and I make our way back. I continue smoothing the stones with my fingers. Not for their sake, but for mine. For this brief period of time, I imagine the hearth of the earth’s core still inside the stone. I want to be warmed by the force of the inner sphere within our one and only sphere.

I return to the house with my loot, as proud as a sushi chef who just purchased all the best cuts from the fish market. I take this last set of stones, shells, and bark curls to my work in progress. After five days, the baking dish is crammed with intertidal delicacies. There is, in fact, too much. Difficult decisions will need to be made.

This is the burden of abundant flotsam and jetsam. This is a poet’s task in a baking dish: culling, rearranging. Ultimately sacrificing the one stone you thought you would never give up but now must do, because it no longer works with all the other ones. I look at the pie one last time. Photograph it, which will be the only thing about it that lasts. After the pie’s portrait has been captured, I carry it to the shore, dismantle its parts, and give each morsel back to the sea. (Except for a few of the rocks, which I take home after carefully weighing them in my hand. I can carry this much. It’s not too much to carry.)

This year is the best pie I’ve ever made. At least I think so. On some level, I am in no position to judge. This is the poet’s anguish in the form of a beachcomber pie: not knowing if the varied colors and textures work as whole, or if anyone, after one bite, will want a second. Not knowing if this collection of stones, hand-picked and held by me, have any relevance outside of my own pocket. Knowing only that making pies or poems can never unmake sorrow or smooth out injustice; will never disappear cruelty. Knowing a pie cannot solve a single real-world problem. And making it anyway.

Snapshots from the walks where pie ingredients were gathered.

Thank you for reading.

{| AC

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When I first moved to the island, I did everything I could to dissuade the barn swallows from nesting on the house. I swore at them, played loud music, sprayed the hose on the “jet” setting in the general direction of their mid-air swoops. At one point, I managed to spray down a nest in progress. But that made me feel worse. The barn swallows came back and built a second nest a few feet away from where I had demolished the first one. Their perseverance humbled me.

Now in May, when I spot the first returning swallows flying by the house to scout out the best real estate, I smile. By the middle of June, the hatchlings arrive, and only a few days later are large enough to beg loudly for food at 4:30 in the morning. I sleep with the window open so I can listen to them cry out for the opportunity to live. Some days I’m not sure I want the opportunity myself, but then I find the other ones—fallen, stolen, hunted, abandoned. The owls are hungry and my home’s windows are deceiving. I don’t know what is fair or not. But I can root for the swallows born on the eves. Which I do, when they drop down, huddle in a group on the deck’s railing, and take their first awkward flight toward the dark spaces of the canopy just beyond.

Flight School

This year's barn swallows come down
from the eves, land first on the railing, hesitate.
Downy-necked and plump, the fledglings 
open wide their beaks, waiting for what 
they have known to still come easy.

These beasts are the lucky ones.
Yesterday unveiled a stiff, grounded goldfinch.
The day before a scatter of blue, shattered eggs
dusting the trail's carpet like broken bits of sky.

I could continue counting backwards
to sum up the losses which will surely go on.
I could blame the sheen of the windows,
non-native owls, the cellular disturbance.

But the juveniles are perched on the rail.
One unfolds its angel bones, leaps.
Then another, and another. And they go.
And I want to learn everything they know.

Thank you for reading.

{[ AC

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»【HHH】This post is certified as human-created by Authograph.com «

Last week brought a dose of the longed-for, best-of Pacific Northwest late spring weather. Warm with a gentle breeze. Blue skies with a whisk of tissue paper clouds, the ones that slink down at the end of the day and color the blaze of the sunset two-to-three shades darker.

May had just finished bringing her crayon crush dreams to fruition. Peonies, rhododendrons, lilies, strawberries, and the delicately painted helicopter wings of maples all fashioned the view in broad ranges of pinks, yellows, reds, creamsicles, various tones of lime, a cacophony of chartreuses and subtle waves of dusty blues. Hummingbirds dashed about on their well-oiled wings, and sometimes (astonishingly) stopped mid-air to assess their options. Bewick’s wrens, Black-headed Grosbeaks, Song sparrows and the dazzling Western Tanager were in full concert while the bees shamelessly, passionately made out with an array of euphorbia blossoms.

As I sat next to My Beloved on the front deck, listening and looking at all this splendor with a smile on my face, I said: “Maybe this is my Beaches.”

He didn’t know what I meant.

I might have guessed that he wouldn’t have seen the movie, being almost ten years younger than me, but I was willing to bet he knew the song, which I began to sing.

“Did you ever know that you’re my hero . . .”

He did not know it.

“Bette Midler? Barbara Hershey after Hannah and Her Sisters and with her overplump, injected lips?”

“It sounds familiar.” He was humoring me.

So I had to explain it.

“Here’s the situation: You know you’re going to die soon - maybe within weeks, but it’s not to the point where you can’t sit up and have a conversation. You’re just tired and no one expects you to really do anything anymore. Even if you wanted to do something, go somewhere, you wouldn’t have the energy for that. Your body would still be available to you, but only within a limited capacity. Your mind would be operational, but also: preparing.

“Mostly, you have to put up with people asking you ridiculous questions that are not helpful or interesting (which is kind of what has been going on your entire life anyway.) You spend the great majority of your days in the most comfortable chair you own, with a blanket over you, looking at … “

I paused. My Beloved looked at me with expectation, as if I were having one of those menopausal moments where a common word I use regularly escaped from my synapses that very second.

“No,” I continued “that’s the question. What are you looking at? Where do you want to be? Who do you want sitting next to you? All day. For weeks, or however long you have to live. Because wherever you are, whatever your view is, whoever is with you all day, just looking out at—whatever—with you—that is your Beaches.”

My Beloved nodded in a gesture of understanding.

I looked at the dog, fully white-muzzled now, dream-running towards the slow squirrels scampering in the wilds of his imagination.

“This is definitely Wellington’s Beaches,” I said.

“Well that’s not true because the dog is never going to die.”

Friends, that particular kind of denial (as adorable and full-hearted as it is) can be categorized as definitely not preparing.

But prepared or not, as the world rolls on toward the next equinox, which always feels like a second chance at a New Year reset to me, I want to remind myself to stop counting summers — all the ones past and all the ones to come that I look forward to and yet can’t count on because the number of future summers available to me is a secret number that cannot be revealed. Ever.

I want to remind myself to listen more, to people who want to express something I don’t know yet - about them, personally or about the way they experience their own time here, or about anything they have the honesty and energy to say out loud.

I want to remind myself not to wait for a dire diagnosis in order to give myself permission to spend an entire day in a comfortable chair looking at the breathtakingly generous earth, with someone I love right next to me.

Most of all, I want to wish everyone out there your own custom-created Beaches Day, anytime you feel like having one.

God knows we could all use a few.

Thank you for reading.

If you are inspired, leave a comment and let us know: What/Who/Where is your Beaches?

Even if you haven’t seen the movie.

{|AC

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For those of you who missed the milky aquamarine-colored spider relaxing in the petal of the peony (as I did when I took the photo) here’s a close-up. Spider at twelve o’clock.1

The soundtrack for my Beaches (no offense, Bette.)

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