drmstream[writing]

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 […]

When I stand on the hill and look down the river, I feel like I can breath again. The houses, I hardly notice them, I don’t notice them, I don’t know how to explain it you. I don’t notice them because I know what is inside them. I feel it, the rough wood chairs and […]

At Storm King, the unpar­al­leled sculp­ture gar­den in New York’s Hud­son Val­ley, an decay­ing stone wall wound through the old dairy fields. The sculp­tor Andy Goldswor­thy over two sum­mers in 1997 and 1998 directed the struc­ture of a new stone wall along the path of the old one. The new wall has a for­mal ele­gance that […]

On the Banksville Road, there’s an old build­ing where I go to stock up on the assorted bot­tled waters, soft drinks and juices that we all favor. There’s not much of any­thing in that part of town: the hard­ware store shut down last year, leav­ing the bev­er­age store, the liquor store attached to it, the […]

16 Cold Moun­tain is a house With­out beams or walls. The six doors left and right are open The hall is blue sky. The rooms all vacant and vague The east wall beats on the west wall At the cen­ter noth­ing. Bor­row­ers don’t bother me In the cold I build a lit­tle fire When I’m […]

Step out from behind your counter and walk to the door to take in the brisk after­noon air of this gloomy Spring day. You always look down Beale toward the river, where the sky is lighter. It’s been a slow morn­ing, been a slow day, been a slow month, the city on edge since the […]

Pond in sum­mer, taken with iPhone4, retouched with pho­to­gene I Wan­dered Lonely As A Cloud I wan­dered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daf­fodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Flut­ter­ing and danc­ing in the breeze. Con­tin­u­ous as […]

Beach sky, taken with an iPhone4, retouched with pho­to­gene In between see­ing and not see­ing, there is a large space of not being aware. When you are see­ing, you find focus points, and skip from point to point as if you were rac­ing on stone out­crop­pings on a stormy beach. When you are not seeing, […]

I The world is so big, there is so much to com­pre­hend, that we are best start­ing with some­thing small, some­thing pre­cise — a sim­ple story, an image, an idea –and then writ­ing every­thing we can think about it, and let that writ­ing take us to places we hadn’t antic­i­pated going. II When you write, don’t […]

A few heads turned, like ani­mals at a water­ing hole. Then a few more, and they started to walk, these hip­pos and rhi­nos, egrets and water boars, zebras and ante­lope that we were packed with onto the sear­ing hot strip of sand between the crash­ing waves and the clut­tered edge of the Del­marva Penin­sula. T. […]