Browse Sections
Require Subscription
What Happened During The Ice Storm
Tree branches glistened like glass. Then broke like glass. Ice thickened on the windows until everything outside blurred. Farmers moved their livestock into the barns, and most animals were safe. But not the pheasants. Their eyes froze shut.
November 2014A Question Of Comfort
One gets used to ugliness so quickly. What we avert our eyes from one day is easily borne the next when we have learned a little more about love. Nurses know this, and so do mothers.
October 2014Bodies Of The Giants
I stayed two days close to the bodies of the giants, and there were no trippers, no chattering troupes with cameras. There’s a cathedral hush here. Perhaps the thick soft bark absorbs sound and creates a silence. The trees rise straight up to zenith; there is no horizon.
September 2014
excerpted from
The Practice Of The Wild
The pathless world of wild nature is a surpassing school and those who have lived through her can be tough and funny teachers.
August 2014
The Genuine Heart Of Sadness
Basic goodness is good because it is unconditional, or fundamental. It is there already, in the same way that heaven and earth are there already.
July 2014
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, / vacation with pay. Want more / of everything ready-made. Be afraid / to know your neighbors and to die. / And you will have a window in your head.
June 2014This Song Is Everywhere
You know, you are as good a songwriter as there is, but you might not believe it. If you don’t believe it, that’s why you’re not. All you got to do is to set down and write up what’s wrong and how to fix it. That’s all there is to it. Lord knows there is plenty of matter to work on. All we need is more songwriters. You, for instance.
May 2014excerpted from
Who Dies?
Behind the restless movement of the mind is the stillness of being, the stillness that has no name, no reputation, nothing to protect. It is the natural mind.
April 2014
excerpted from
The Outermost House
Creation is here and now. So near is man to the creative pageant, so much a part is he of the endless and incredible experiment, that any glimpse he may have will be but the revelation of a moment, a solitary note in a symphony thundering through debatable existences of time. Poetry is as necessary to comprehension as science. It is as impossible to live without reverence as it is without joy.
March 2014excerpted from
What Took You So Long?
In India, old, old stories still are told of a Hindu holy man named Narada who devoted his life to attaining the spiritual liberation of nirvana.
February 2014
Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today