Life

Sometimes, I find, it helps to half-die to the world…

First there was snow and then there was rain and then there was ice.
And still the squirrels ate.

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be water…

I wonder how many times
I’ve missed a connection with a soaring hawk or a waving tree because I’m thinking what to have
for lunch?

Each morning I waked to trails and tracks…

I’m thinking of the bird that flew into the window…

The boldest thing we can do is sit with the loudness of silence…

Some days the sun rises with a roar…

Could there be anything more glorious than the way the low February sun falls on the trunk of that white birch this afternoon?

Yesterday I made banana pudding

The best questions are the ones we’re too busy – and too scared – to ask…

Birds, they say, fly…

These are the end-of-the-world places…

That moment on the runway…

I was alone for two weeks and met nobody except myself.

Today I want to thank you for the snow pants you gave me for my birthday…

I can travel the boulevards of Paris, the souks of Morocco and the sierras of Spain yet fail to find anything as entrancing as that tree,
bare and alone in the field this winter.

We seek security but forget the greatest safety is found in stillness.

I want to name you but…

I buried the bird that flew into the window by the big, green propane tank. All I can remember is the blue and the yellow of its feathers and thinking how could
something so beautiful be so dead?

Go to London and feel the heavy grey skies and gritty black roads and the red lights in the puddles and the buses that roar…

Somewhere deep in California, I find a forgotten orchard…

The low winter sun shines through the bare trees and throws blurry shadows on the snow. Hinting at reality.

Owls, they say, are wise…

Forget your golden thrones and your private jets, your Platinum cards and your million fans. I will forgo all those things for five quiet minutes watching the squirrel on the branch with snow in its fur.

On a wander led by wonder, I think I’m going somewhere, but really I’m going here.

Some days from 9-5 I’m busy inside my electric head, my fingers are tapping and my arms are pushing…

It takes a lot of facts and data to know joy is found in the embrace of mystery.

On this, the most silent of dusks…

Thank you today to the sun…

Between yesterday’s frustrations and tomorrow’s anxieties, I found two minutes to watch you roll pastry…

My first language is English and my first word is tree as I glimpse branches of beeches on my be-wheeled walks…

Yesterday, at about half past two, I fell in wonder with the world

What if we’re playing bingo all wrong…

Sometimes a bad day can become a good day…

Each time I bite into a pear I notice grit and sand…

How about that moment, dark at night when you come out of your house…

Today the sun remembered us…

Perhaps one day I’ll stop my grasp for answers, for solutions, for the security of certainty…

After three phone calls, twenty emails, and two meetings, I found one Barred Owl…

If we plunge deep below the rocks
and the worms to the loamy richness of soil…

Let me find five minutes to sink
into that timeless time when there’s no was and no will—
because only now is.

There’s that momentbetween in and out,between noun and verb,between thought and deed,between note and chord,between fork and mouth,between breeze and rustle,between desk and couch,between tweet and squawk,between tick and tock.There’s that moment, that gap—the void that allows something in.

Driving back from Foodland along the road lined with snow as the darkness begins to seep…

Every morning I step outside…

At the end of a week when the news is heavy and the Zooms are fast…

If you’ve listened to a knife through an onion or ladled soup into a bowl you’ll know there’s music in every kitchen, every day.

Sometimes I think of the bear sleeping in her den deep in the woods…

On my way home, the final stretch is down a dirt trail, today whitened and softened by snow…

There’s a world I know that makes sesame seeds and chili peppers…