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After The Flood

When we went back outside, Tom had stopped sawing and was repotting the bare vine. “You never know,” he said. He’s right, of course. We don’t know what the world will bring, what power lies in a salvaged tomato plant, what we all do to build back, survive, thrive.

The School

We weren’t even supposed to have a puppy.

Nesting

They take turns at the feeders, but if one lingers too long, the others — usually males — will jabber insults until the offender leaves. I have a secret nickname for the house sparrows: Little A-holes.

Sonny Boy Williamson

In a clearing in the woods alongside a country lane outside the town of Tutwiler in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, stands Sonny Boy Williamson’s granite grave marker. As we approach, we notice more of the glints beneath us, and notice the same silver glints piled atop the old monument.

Play, Hands

Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.

Fire All Around

Even though we all breathed the smoke from the destruction of the town of Paradise in 2018 — breathed in their burning cars, homes, animals, and bodies — it was still happening “over there” to “other people.”

Sunbeams

Even with all our technological accomplishments and urban sophistication, we consider ourselves blessed, healed in some manner, forgiven, and for a moment transported into some other world, when we catch a passing glimpse of an animal in the wild: a deer in some woodland, a fox crossing a field, a butterfly in its dancing flight southward to its wintering region, a hawk soaring in the distant sky.

Thomas Berry

Morally Indefensible

It is often said of laying hens, veal calves, and dogs kept in cages for experimental purposes that this does not cause them to suffer, since they have never known other conditions. . . . This is a fallacy.