Topics | The Natural World | The Sun Magazine #3

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The Natural World

Poetry

I Eat My Words

Yes, it’s cruel. An unseemly gluttony. / Trapping the ortolan buntings, forcing / them to gorge in the dark, mouthfeel of seeds / their only comfort in that closed, blank space.

By Leona Sevick September 2023
Poetry

The Art Of Living

My fly line unspools across the water like a long sentence / whose final punctuation is a grizzly hackle tied by a friend. / He clamped his fly vise to the branch of a fallen pine / right after we arrived by mule train at this Montana river.

By Erik Reece August 2023
Poetry

Total Solar

We took our kids to City Hall Plaza / with its dead-on view / of South Mountain to watch / the moon eclipse our sun / in a certain way we’d been told / wouldn’t happen again / in our lifetime unless we traveled / to a far-off part of the globe.

By John Bargowski August 2023
Quotations

Sunbeams

One imagines the birth of happiness to be accompanied by some great spectacular upheaval. One can imagine it flowering in the most luxurious setting. Yet happiness is born of a trifle, feeds on nothing.

Mariama Bâ, Scarlet Song

August 2023
The Sun Interview

No Small Wonder

Dacher Keltner On The Science Of Awe

Emotions aren’t discrete bubbles. They are blending into each other all the time. You might be feeling awe and wonder at the miracle of life, and also realizing that we all die, which perhaps moves you closer to terror. In our work we try to find what’s true in it all.

By Mark Leviton August 2023
Quotations

Sunbeams

I turn off the radio, listen to the quiet. Which has its own, rich sound. Which I knew, but had forgotten. And it is good to remember.

Elizabeth Berg, Open House

July 2023
The Dog-Eared Page

Quiet, Please

Gordon Hempton On The Search For Silence In A Noisy World

We must recognize that we’ve largely lost quiet, even in our most pristine, natural places. But we can still choose to value quiet more as a culture.

By Leslee Goodman July 2023
Poetry

False Spring

We know it can’t last. / It’s still February, and it always snows in March / and April and sometimes even in May. / We’ll take it, though, the hunks of ice / shrinking and sliding off the roof / into puddles that weren’t there yesterday

By Kurt Luchs June 2023
Poetry

Some Quiet Evenings

I go out to sit with them — thin / insects tuning their strings, / the night’s first bat casting / in the breeze — and remember / that evening, hot and windless, / a new lover stripping / my bed, spreading my sheets / on the moonless grass.

By AE Hines June 2023
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Footprints In Alabama

My mama’s family is Alabama for at least four generations. Though I grew up in Illinois, my soul is rooted here. So whenever anyone narrows their eyes and cocks their head to question how I — a Black woman — could possibly love this place, my answer has been: “Because generations of my people’s blood and footprints are in this soil.”

By Jamila Minnicks June 2023