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Sunbeams

To those devoid of imagination, a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.

Aldo Leopold

To the Arresting Officer

You patted me down roughly, went through my pockets and pulled out three crumpled twenties, some guitar picks, my stepfather’s pocketknife. “You got drugs, son?”

Luxuries

A foreign sports car, a Hawaiian vacation, a glass of water on a hot day

Love and Other Pandemics

The thing about the apocalypse is that nobody said it would be so beautiful. Spring is letting down her hair. The air is warm, sweet, and clear. Moss drapes over a storm drain, parting for the rush of early-morning runoff. A heavy quiet has descended since we took to our homes, save for the shrieking hawks circling the shuttered strip-mall parking lot next door to my mother’s house outside of Philadelphia.

Flower People

There was a rumor the NAACP would call for a boycott of white-owned businesses. Eugene’s mother said it wasn’t clear what the objective would be, except to piss off white people and make Black people feel in control of something. “A show of Black power,” she said, holding up a fist from the living-room sofa, but she was worried more people would be killed.

The Next Peak

The mountain in winter enables the kind of sleep that restores, heals, allows brains to solve problems. The days have more than enough darkness to crawl inside.

Fuel

Feeding the woodstove, siphoning gas with a hose, drinking endless cups of coffee

Returning

Suzanne Kelly on Green Burial and the Embrace of Mortality

The fact is, “green” is the way we buried our dead over 150 years ago in the US. It’s the way many Indigenous peoples in North America have cared for their dead. This other, more recent, method is the anomaly.