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Balanced Upon a Broken World
This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves, And the houses ran along them...
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And Not Now
Had I not been awake I would have missed it, A wind that rose and whirled until the roof Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore And got me up, the whole of me a-patter, Alive and ticking like an...
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You Come Too
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring; I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too. I’m going out to fetch the little...
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We Ate, Grateful
We turned into the drive, and gravel flew up from the tires like sparks from a fire. So much to be done—the unpacking, the mail and papers … the grass needed mowing …. We climbed stiffly out of the...
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Don’t Be Afraid
To acknowledge the significance of this day and the events of 13 years ago: The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are, because the party wouldn’t...
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Summer Waning and Wistful
Summer begins to have the look Peruser of enchanting Book Reluctantly but sure perceives A gain upon the backward leaves – Autumn begins to be inferred By millinery of the cloud, Or deeper color in...
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End-Of-Summer Light
photo by Josh Scholten For today, I will memorize the two trees now in end-of-summer light and the drifts of wood asters as the yard slopes away toward the black pond, blue dragonflies in the clouds...
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Relishing
The birds do not sing in these mornings. The skies are white all day. The Canadian geese fly over high up in the moonlight with the lonely sound of their discontent. Going south. Now the rains and...
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Twenty Nine Halloweens
On Halloween day in 1985, I packed up my clothes, a roll up mattress, grabbed one lonely pumpkin from our small garden, locked our rental house door for the last time, climbed in my car and headed...
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My Heart Bleeds
A weft of leafless spray Woven fine against the gray Of the autumnal day, And blurred along those ghostly garden tops Clusters of berries crimson as the drops That my heart bleeds when I remember How...
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We Will Remember
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. ~Lawrence Binyon from...
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Even the Branches
Regarding the Home of One’s Childhood, One Could: forget the plum tree; forget its black-skinned plums; also the weight of their leaning as they leaned over starry...
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Bringing Sunlight to November
Ben and Hilary Gibson It was gray and drizzly the day you were born. November is too often like that–there are times during this darkening month when we’re never really certain we’ll see the sun...
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Dismissed in Peace
Seventy two years ago this week, my parents were married. Christmas Eve certainly wasn’t a typical wedding anniversary, but it did make it easy to remember during their years together. It was a date...
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Between Two Rooms
In 1959, our family moved from an older 2 story farm house in a rural community north of Seattle, to a rambler style home on seven acres just outside the city limits of Olympia, Washington. It was a...
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Handing Off Dreams
photo by Dan Gibson Originally published in Country Magazine in 2008, now updated Our treehouse is almost twenty years old, lonesome and empty in our front yard, a constant reminder of abandoned Swiss...
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Becoming the Disturbance
photos by Nate Gibson No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. ~Charles Lamb Do I dare Disturb the universe? ~T.S. Eliot “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” This New Year’s...
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A Calico Diplomat
Cally, our adopted calico cat from close friends who moved across the country, was quite elderly and fading fast. Winter is always a tough time for barn cats, even with snug shelter, plentiful food...
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An Olfactory Journey
“The smell of that buttered toast simply spoke to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cozy parlour firesides on winter evenings,...
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The Shadows of a Moment
I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected — an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I...
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