The woods ran up to the edge of the pond and every Spring the snow melt would reveal old trees that had crashed to the ground in the Winter freeze. We would pick our way around the sodden husks, pull rotten rotten branches loose and talk about which trunks would dry out firm and hard […]
The ice forms surreptitiously, against all probability, when winter takes a river. The pieces form inadvertently, bound by the cold, and collide into each other, adhered by the quickening of the silky black water. It’s like a crowd of summer lilies — but it isn’t. The pieces of ice are jagged and uneven, thick and […]
Gustave Doré’s illustration to Dante’s Inferno. Plate X: Canto III: Charon herds the sinners onto his boat. “Charon the demon, with eyes of glede, / Beckoning to them, collects them all together, / Beats with his oar whoever lags behind.’” (Longfellow’s translation, which isn’t particularly good, it must be said.) Find more here:
In the great scheme of things, how much do things really change? Life was meaner and the time and space of human emotion more narrow 130 years ago. But the essential components of the human condition were much like they were today. I’m reminded of these things when I look at the photos below. People cluster […]
When I was 14 or so, my father reclaimed a sailboat that had been left untended for years on a trailer under the trees near our house. The open deck had been closed in by a waxed, mildewed canvas cover. Under the moss and grit that covered the hull, the wood was still sturdy and sound. […]