December 2020
The Only Real Story
I think of the children who will never know, intuitively, that a flower is a plant’s way of making love, or what silence sounds like, or that trees breathe out what we breathe in.
Sunbeams
In spite of our rather boastful talk about progress, and our pride in the gadgets of civilization, there is, I think, a growing suspicion — indeed, perhaps an uneasy certainty — that we have been sometimes a little too ingenious for our own good. . . . We are beginning to wonder whether our power to change the face of nature should not have been tempered with wisdom for our own good, and with a greater sense of responsibility for the welfare of generations to come.
December 2020
Our Great Reckoning
Eileen Crist On The Consequences Of Human Plunder
In this current pandemic the fear and upheaval drove Americans to hoard toilet paper and guns and ammo. Try to imagine a food shortage instead of a scarcity of toilet paper.
Maine Escapes
The deckhand helps where he can. He flips a few lobsters right side up. He tucks a stray antenna away from the pinch of the crate’s hinges. The lobsters, when he holds them, emit a faint buzzing noise — sort of like a scream, if you think about it, and the deckhand does.
Penance For Nico
I first met Nico at a gathering of country-club types. We two misfits clearly didn’t belong at such a party, where the other guests had doused themselves in so much cologne that we were forced to escape our host’s home to catch our breath on the freshly cut grass.
The Practice Of Touch
I imagine my own daughter in Danny’s situation. She is a toddler, so I would be allowed to stay with her if she got COVID. But if she were older, what would I do? What rules would I break to sit beside her?
Tuvalu
Tuvalu is in danger of disappearing due to sea-level rise. The ocean around it is rising about one inch every five years, twice the global average. It’s estimated that an eight- to sixteen-inch increase will be enough to make the country uninhabitable.
The Debate
I’m listening to my father and his brother, / both in their eighties, debate their childhood / from adjoining La-Z-Boy recliners. / “We had no toys,” my father insists. / “What are you talking about, no toys?” / My uncle practically leaps from his chair
After We Buried The Dog In The Dark
He came back. I saw him / in the grass, the white of him / glowing in the floodlight, / the wind turning it off / and on again. / I saw his face at the door, / waiting to be let in, / his nose leaving smears / across the glass.
