Lying still, your mouth gapes open. I wonder if you breathe your last. Your hair a white cloud. Your skin softened from disuse. No washing, digging, planting Gardens or children Anymore. Where do your dreams take you? At times you wake in your childhood home Rolling wheat fields, boundless days of freedom. Other...

The receding October moon reluctantly rose, Withdrawing from the full globe of a few nights before. I drive a night-darkened country road, white lines sweeping past, Aware of advancing frost in the evening haze, Anxious to return home to fireplace light. Nearing a familiar corner, a stop sign loomed, To...

In a corner of the kitchen By the window On a card table with a lamp Lies an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. Take a moment To create order out of chaos Fit a piece to its unique spot Finding connection, completion, continuity. First the border pieces Placed to create boundaries of Firm foundational building...

Poet’s Note: This poem was written after attending a foaling in our barn. First fluid Flows in subtle stream Then gushes In sudden drench Soaking, saturating, Precipitating. Inevitability. No longer cushioned. Slick sliding forward. Following the rich river Downstream. The smell of birth Clings...

Today will be applesauce-making day on our farm. The number of windfall apples lying on the ground is exponentially increasing, so I could put off the task no longer. The apple trees in our orchard are primarily antique varieties rarely grown any longer. I selected Spitzenburgs, a favorite apple of...

My grandmother’s house had been torn down after she sold her property, which fronted a muddy inlet in Puget Sound Bay near Anacortes, Washington, to a lumber company. This was the house where her four babies were born, where she and my grandfather loved and fought and separated and loved again, and...

The call came in the middle of a busy night as we worked on a floppy baby with high fever, a croupy toddler whose breathing squeezed and squeaked, a pale adolescent transfusing due to leukemia bleeding. It was an anencephalic baby just born, unexpected, unwanted in a hospital across town, and she needed...

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – Emily Dickinson A life well lived is no flat passage. There are bumps and hollows, pinnacles and valleys. Looking up from the path, beyond the next step, it is surprising to see where the road is leading: sometimes straight up into the blue, sometimes a plunge...

Our woodlot lies quiet this time of year. There have been numerous wind storm that have snapped trees or uprooted them completely and they rest where they have fallen, a crisscross graveyard of trunks that block paths and thwart us on the trails. Years of leaves have fallen undisturbed, settling...