Tag Archives: Books

Written in Time

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Monday Morning Musings:

Written in Time

“Memory is a wicked thing that warps and twists. But paper and ink receive the truth without emotion, and they read it back without partiality. That, I believe, is why so few women are taught to read and write. God only knows what they would do with the power of pen and ink at their disposal.”
― Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River

Caught in clouds, sifted and
shifted from shadows,
words can fall with sound and fury,
signifying nothing*

they may also fall in gentle showers of blurred
blue, blooming pink, forming rings to
hold beating hearts and captured thoughts.

Once a midwife kept a diary, a numbered account of
dates and births, the passage of time and seasons,
the secrets whispered in travail, the gossip
in a frontier town, and then

a brilliant historian read the diary,
unraveled threads, tied them together,
and wrote a book, using the midwife’s words
to uncover and explore her world, and then

a novelist, took the historian’s book,
inspired by that eighteenth-century midwife, and wrote
another book, true to her,
but giving us more than the facts, so that
I could feel the warmth of a fire, the cold Maine
winter, smell sawdust and blood–imagine her life,

I think. So different from my own. Though I understand
what it is to be a mother, a wife, a woman writing in a book,
the power of words. Rising. Remembering.

*From Macbeth’s “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy

This is the first day of poetry month, so there will be many posts from me this month. I read The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon for my daughter’s book club at Blue Cork Winery, which met this past week. We had a lively discussion—most of the participants enjoyed the book. I have also read and used in research, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Midwife’s Tale.

We’ve had many rainy days and windy days recently. Yesterday afternoon though we took a spring walk at Tall Pines State Preserve. I saw a snake ripple in a fast wave across the path. I was happy to see some flowering trees, too.

Last night we watched the movie, Fallen Leaves. It was Finland’s entry for the Academy Awards, and it won the 2023 jury prize at Cannes. I liked it a lot, in fact, more and more as I think about it. It’s the story of two lonely people in Helsinki, who meet and connect. It’s sort of a very deadpan, quirky rom-com fairy tale. It’s understated and not a movie for those who love action films. It includes nods to movies, and it has an eclectic soundtrack that includes Finish folksongs, Shubert lieder, older pop hits, and a dour Finnish duo. There are key scenes in a karaoke bar and in and around the “Ritz” cinema. There’s also a cute dog.

Back to books, I am one of the poets included in the anthology, Treasuring Poetry 4: In Touch with Nature, compiled and edited by Kaye Lynne Booth and Robbie Cheadle. Here’s the trailer, but there will be information coming up about it in the next couple of weeks.

In the Second Week of March, You Dream

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Monday Morning Musings:

In the Second Week of March, You Dream

“all eternity
is in the moment this is what
Blake said Whitman said”
—Mary Oliver, “Seven White Butterflies”

“She slept, and in her sleep, she smiled because she saw glories of sundazzle and water and the night sky white with stars; she was flying once more effortless across the land.”
― Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

March has become a winged beast,
blowing clouds and trees with his breath,
still, robins sing from shivering boughs,
and daffodils yawn and stretch
from greening ground.

In this last gasp of winter, spring
is springing, buds are bursting red
and pinking, ice is melting, water
trickling in rising rills, flooding
over earth and streets,

the greening ground,
the spinning round, the changing light,
all that is so wrong, forgotten
in the sun-dazzle moment, an eternity
listening to the robin sing to feathered clouds

in lapis sky that turns to grey. And when you sleep,
magic is commonplace; multitudes inhabit a vast
small space. You are old and young. You conquer time,
you walk through walls—you fly.

Hello again! We’re under a wind advisory that began yesterday and goes until tonight. Friday night we had heavy rain, and yesterday, when my husband was driving home from visiting his mom, he saw snow. But later in the week, we will reach 70 F—so we’re getting everything in March!. Our daffodils are starting to bloom.

We switched to Daylight Saving Time yesterday, for absolutely no good reason. Fortunately, I don’t have to be anywhere at a particular time, so I’ve just continued going to bed early and getting up early. And I dream.

TV, Movies, Books, and This and That:

I don’t think I mentioned that we watched The Woman in the Wall, a drama series on Showtime/Paramount+. Ruth Wilson plays Lorna Brady, a woman who struggles with mental issues and sleep deprivation. She’s a survivor of a Magdalene Laundry, and one morning she wakes to find a dead woman in her house. Meanwhile, Detective Colman Akande arrives from Dublin to investigate the murder of a priest. I really enjoyed watching the back and forth, the trying to determine what was real, and uncovering secrets. Though I think there could have been a little bit more development. All of the leads were excellent.

We’re watching Season 2 of The Club (Netflix), a Turkish series set in 1950s Istanbul. It’s historical melodrama, but we’re caught up in it.

We also finally streamed American Fiction, which we both liked very much. It’s laugh out loud funny at times. I think many writers will appreciate it. It won best adapted screenplay at the Academy Awards last night.

I’m reading Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds, which I am enjoying right now for its lyrical language and fable-like story.

Here is today’s Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson. She’s also started doing an audio version for those who prefer to listen.

VOTE BLUE!!

in every election, if you value your rights at all. This is not hyperbole. We need a Democratic majority in the House and Senate. We should have more than one political party, but right now, we have one healthy, real political party, the Democratic party, and one cult centered around the former president–who has said out loud what he plans to do. There is no Republican party any more, only a group dedicated to taking away our rights.

Here’s a photo my husband brought back from his mom’s. We were freshmen in college.

A Very Strange Business

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Monday Morning Musings:

“Getting old turned out to be a very strange business. She was learning so many new things about time. It could twist and bend until the past met the present, and vice versa. She both here and there, then and now, it was invigorating, but also sometimes confusing.”
–Zadie Smith, The Fraud

A Very Strange Business

What is there left to say about snow?
The way time seems to stop as it falls
soft on feathered wings?

The way it resumes as seconds tick
and icy pebbles strike your cheek,
and your booted feet slide on pavements
slicked in snail trails
frozen by winter night.

You remember snowmen and sleds,
the world turned upside-down,
like someone else’s life.

The world is now fire and ice,
divisions drawn; ambiguity swept
aside in soundbite seconds,
sonic assertions, bold, whitewashed lies.

The Earth shivers and quakes.
Still, the waves come. The tides rise and fall.

You make soup. And listen to the sparrows sing.
Write and watch. Wonder what else will come
with the daffodils of spring.

I haven’t done much outside walking this past week because I’m not a fan of snow, ice, and wind. And then there was the morning we had no heat. But I’m also wary of spring, despite its light and beauty. Covid first closed the world in spring, both my parents died in spring months (April and May), and uprisings often bloom with the flowers of spring. But still, I hope.

This is soup weather. In the past few weeks, I’ve made onion, lentil, vegetarian borscht, vegetarian chili, and fish chowder, and I have several containers frozen (so hopefully we don’t lose power again).

We finally watched the big-budget excellent Oppenheimer and the lower-budget but still good The Kitchen (on Netflix) recently, which perhaps is fueling my apocalyptic words above. I also read Zadie Smith’s brilliant new novel, The Fraud. It’s based on the true nineteenth-century story of an English butcher who had been living in Australia who claimed to be Sir Roger Tichborne, the heir to a great estate and fortune. He’s known as the Claimant, and he attracts huge crowds of supporters who hold rallies for him, despite all reasoning indicating he’s a fraud. (Sound familiar?) This case is sort of the backdrop of the story told mainly by Eliza Touchet, a widowed housekeeper in her cousin-in-law’s household. He’s a novelist, and Touchet has much to say about writing and novelists, including Charles Dickens, whom she loathes. The other main character is Andrew Bogle, formerly enslaved in Jamaica, who is a key witness for the Claimant. It’s a long book, and it took a while for me to really get into it, though I appreciated Zadie Smith’s writing and Eliza Touchet’s sharp observations. She’s a memorable character.

Descending, Ascending

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Monday Morning Musings:

“That though the heart is breaking, happiness can exist in a moment, also. And because the moment in which we live is all the time there really is, we can keep going.”
― Zora Neale Hurston. (2018). Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”.

Descending, Ascending

Each winter she descends,
her mouth red-stained, she rises in spring
like sun and moon
reborn

in ancient rhythms
of ancient songs
of stellar light
unnoticed

in unwritten time,
migrations of enlightenment–
the sparkle of sun-silver on outstretched wings,
flapped

the shadows shift. You see a peacock array.
Does the clock ever end? Around and around,
you look for a chivalrous nerve in space
determined

to find connections in the liminal.
Mother to child and on. Never forget
you say. Not black-and-white. Prisms. The daffodils rise,
again.

I used some of Kerfe’s Random Words. So. . .this was a strange week.
On, Tuesday, we went to William Heritage Winery in Mullica Hill, NJ for a February/Valentine wine and chocolate pairing, and it was lovely. Despite the woman at a nearby table holding her companions–and us–captive with her non-stop monologues. We learned she had had COVID and worked in the poker room. There had been some rain (and a tornado hit north of us), but when we got there, the sun was shining.
Then later in the week, I spent some time in the ER, entering Thursday morning and leaving Friday afternoon. It turned out to be a “better safe than sorry” situation with observation and tons of tests done “out of an abundance of caution.” I feel fine now, but you will understand why I’m behind on everything. I didn’t feel great when I got home on Friday because I hadn’t eaten since Wednesday at dinner. But I ate and rested, and we had a family Zoom shabbat, and it was wonderful to see my children. While in the ER, I finished the book club book I was reading, Lessons in Chemistry (though I missed the meeting), and then I re-read the entire book of Anne of Green Gables and started Anne of Avonlea. I remembered I had them on my Kindle.

On Saturday morning, I got a poetry acceptance. So, things seem to be looking up!

Saturday night we watched “Descendant,” an excellent documentary film on Netflix. It’s about the descendants of the people who were enslaved and brought to the US from Africa in 1860 aboard the ship Clotilda. The slave trade had been abolished in 1807, though slavery was not. I knew about the ship Clotilda, but not so much about the community of the descendants of the people captured and brought to Alabama. It’s a wonderful, moving documentary that also explores environmental and economic injustice, and includes audio of Zora Neale Hurston, excerpts of her book, Barracoon, and film footage that she shot from her interviews in the 1920s! I also started thinking about the word “descendant,” climbing down from an ancestor. Of course, if you go back far enough—despite what the White supremacists believe—we’re all related. See: this episode of Finding Your Roots or this interview with Henry Louis Gates

Suspended

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Monday Morning Musings:

Suspended

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
–Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“We hope. We despair. We hope. We despair. This is what governs us. We have a bipolar system.”
—Maira Kalman, And the Pursuit of Happiness

Clouds upon clouds—
an enigma wrapped in mystery,
we follow the clues
but find more questions.

What I mean to say,
is that I—we—are suspended
halfway to here or there

uncertain if we are rising or falling,
like astronauts in zero G
seeking up

or down, confused. The moon floats on the water,
unconcerned geese swim over it, but

another whale is beached, I read,
and I wonder if it, too, was lost,
coordinates off, communications broken–

and now the birds, first indicators.
Perhaps it was always about the birds—
the devilish bones and death rattles of dinosaurs
in their past, they soared into the future,
the evolution of unfurled feathers flapping,
vagabonds of time, soaring

out of the fog, I hear geese honk,
a blue jay squawks–not yet,
a gull laughs.
I walk on. Hoping.

I used some of Jane’s Random Words for this poem.

It already seems a long time since the start of the year. We saw more family members last Monday for brunch, and then met dear friends on Wednesday for a lovely lunch at a Chinese/Japanese restaurant. The temperature was in the 60s that day. Such weird weather—warm, foggy, and then more wintry temperatures over the weekend.

A strange week all around, including the spectacle in our House of Representatives, where it took Kevin McCarthy 15 votes and countless concessions to the right-wing extremists to become Speaker. What a contrast between the mess of the GOP and the unanimous vote by the Democrats for minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. He is quite an orator (Google his name and Alphabet speech if you missed it).

We watched several different types of mysteries this week—so there is a theme here.

Three Pines (Amazon Prime), series inspired by Louise Penny’s books. I’ve read some of the books in her wonderful series, but my husband hasn’t. We both enjoyed the TV series very much. I think Alfred Molina did a great job in portraying Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. This TV series focused on how indigenous people have been treated in Canada. It is darker than the novels, and the magic and warmth of Three Pines itself is not there the way it is in the books, but it is still an excellent series.

The Pale Blue Eye (Netflix) is a solid B movie. It’s a murder mystery with twists set in the winter of 1830 at West Point. Cadet Edgar Allan Poe helps the investigator brought in to solve the mystery of who killed a cadet. It was a good Friday night movie.

Decision to Leave (in theaters and rental) is South Korea’s entry for the 2022 Academy Awards. We both really liked this one, though probably I did more. I’m still thinking about it. It is a twisty tale of murder and romantic obsession with the noirish theme of the male police detective who falls for the beautiful female suspect. Both wonderfully acted. The cinematography/editing is brilliant with the camera giving viewers different points of view and lingering on certain shots.

I’ve recently read and enjoyed two novels:
Joanna Quinn, The Whalebone Theater
Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

I don’t know if these two authors are related, but there was a throwaway line in The Whalebone Theater that alluded to the main character in The Diamond Eye, a Russian woman who became a sniper in WWII.

Life, Art, Time, Place

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Monday Morning Musings:

Life, Time, Art, Place

“It’s about how invisible things circulate within a couple.”
–Tony (Tim Roth) in “Bergman Island”

A beautiful spring day in Old City, Philadelphia, Carpenters’ Hall
A colorful doorstep we passed. LGBTQ+ !

Here, the colors are over-the-rainbow bright,
and there are choices to be made with tea—
blueberry jam or orange marmalade?

It’s a dreamworld, but real as any other
while I’m there,
a few pounds of matter
can hold imagined universes–

I walk with ghosts on Fårö
the director a presence there
even after his death,
and invisible things drift
between married couples,
like jellyfish in the ocean,
growing in the midnight sun.

Or–perhaps I am in Ukraine,
the family’s cherry orchard
soon to be auctioned off,
revolutions looming—
conflicts appeased by volleyball,
or perhaps we are the ball
endlessly lobbed over and into,
finding a place just out of bounds.

I could be at a Cape Cod cottage
swimming in the cold pond water
early in the morning,
a lifetime lived over in a day–

time, space, places
existing always or never,

Wisteria on an old wall.

a morning moon that fades in day,

Morning Moon

a bird in flight–to beyond.

Light and shadow, perhaps an orb. What is real? People say ghosts walk here on this former battlefield. . .

The truth and magic of physics
words may hang in the air,
but a bomb must fall,

and we jump once—
and over and over, remembering
a moment passed,

a split-second when everything changes,
or doesn’t.

Early morning, Driftwood beached and floating on the Delaware River.

Movies, Plays, Books, This and That:

I woke up from a dream this morning where I was in this place with such bright colors, like a Technicolor musical.

On Saturday, I participated in “There’s a Poem in this Place: Poets in the Blogosphere.” It was a wonderful experience, and I was honored to be included amongst such brilliant poets. I will share the video when it becomes available. I realized how important place is in the recent things I’ve watched and read. And how, sitting in a house in New Jersey, or in a theater in Philadelphia, we can be transported somewhere else. (Not an original thought, I know, but still . .) And artists, poets, writers of all types, musicians—all continue to create in war zones or in repressive societies, sometimes bearing witness to what is going on around them, and sometime imagining a better or different world.

I celebrated the poetry month event and the end of Passover with wine and pizza, and we watched the movie Bergman Island. It’s a Merril movie, involving a movie within a movie: “Two American filmmakers retreat to Fårö island for the summer and hope to find inspiration where Bergman shot his most celebrated films. As the days pass by, the lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur, and the couple is torn apart.” I like it more and more as I think about it. It’ one I’d like to watch again, as I was kind of tired.

We saw The Cherry Orchard at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, a pre-theater walk first, and wine and cheese at Tria afterward. An unusual production with slapstick humor, lines referencing contemporary pop culture, and yes, a volleyball game. A railway flipboard is a character who answers the characters’ questions. I haven’t yet decided if I liked it, but it was certainly interesting. The Russian director, Dmitry Krymov, who came here to direct the play just before the invasion of Ukraine, is now living in exile.

I read The Paper Palace: A Novel by Miranda Cowley Heller that takes place in both one day at a summer beach cottage and also through the course of a woman’s life, exploring love, secrets, and relationships. We’re also watching Picard—Season 2 is much better than Season 1, and there is time travel and Q!

If you’ve read this far: I’ve added a River Ghosts page to my Website with information and links.

Book of Days

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Monday Morning Musings:

The first sunrise of the year. ©️Merril D. Smith, 2021

The last moon of 2020 reflected in the river. ©️Merril D. Smith, 2021

The days blend together—
mere words on a page, turned,
the end of one chapter, becomes the start of the next
without pause, the action, or lack thereof continues

one walk becomes another,
but still full of wonder, and sometimes surprise—
the truth in beauty, and I the Sylvan historian–

  • Morning Moon
  • Light breaking through the clouds

if I ask why on a dreary morning,
a voice within says look, listen—
the sky wakes with a slow, secret smile. . .

and it does.

  • A Grey Monday Morning
  • Hopeful bits of color. Red Bank Battlefield, ©️Merril D. Smith, 2021

This first Monday in January is grey and dreary. I haven’t gone anywhere or done much of anything in the past week. I keep forgetting what day it is. New Year’s Day felt like a Sunday. On New Year’s Eve, we did a Zoom meeting/dinner with dear friends. We ate Chinese food, as we’ve done for decades on New Year’s Eve, and we opened a bottle of champagne, too. I got a somewhat ominous fortune. I made a spicy black-eyed pea stew on a round loaf of bread for New Year’s Day, thinking the year needs all the help possible.

We’ve been catching up on shows. The Good Lord Bird, based on James McBride’s novel, is excellent—funny, sad, and timely. Ethan Hawke as abolitionist John Brown is wonderful, and equally good is Joshua Caleb Johnson as Henry “Onion” Shackelford, a young man who Brown thinks is a girl. Both my husband and I thought the show was good—acting, music, and the Fargo-like sly humor—but we weren’t really caught up in it until about half-way through, when suddenly we were. We also watched a French mystery, Frozen Dead (Netflix) (hoping there’s a second season), and started Occupied (Netflix), a Norwegian thriller set in the near future. The first few episodes are quite exciting.

I’ve read a few novels in the last couple of weeks: Kris Waldherr, The Lost History of Dreams; Cat Winters, The Uninvited; David Gillham, Annelies: A Novel, and I’m currently reading Susan Ella MacNeal’s The Prime Minister’s Secret Agent (Maggie Hope, Book 4–I think I’ve read one and three). I’ve been able to get all of these through our county library’s contactless pickup system. I also have a bunch of books on my Kindle for just in case. 😏

There Might Be Ghosts

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Monday Morning Musings:

There might be ghosts in this story–
a tale of family secrets, a haunted house,
nightmares and night terrors

(what if they came for you?)
the spirits, specters, demons, and devils–
a frisson of fear, a shiver and a quiver

as you hear the tale,
it’s not real (you tell yourself)
these things don’t exist

(unless they come for you)
the secret police, the armed agents
to detain, to torture, to turn your life

upside-down, the world we live in now,
where we see the light reflected and wonder how
it is here and there, and wanders

Puddle Reflection, Upside-down World. ©️Merril D. Smith, October 2020

from shore to distant horizon
between what we see
and what we think we see

Autumn refracted and reflected through the mist. Red Bank Battlefield,.©️Merril D. Smith October 2020

in the fog, all is a blur,
sound is distorted, it echoes,
a soft purr of distant cars, the honk of a goose

Heron in the misty ripples of the Delaware River. Red Bank Battlefield. ©️Merril D. Smith, 2020

here birds stop, then soar,
but I stand, rooted like the trees,
in the midst of autumn splendor

(I like to think)
still rising, still growing,
knowing that roots connect underground–

so be it. And healthy cells grow, too,
though the malignant tumors stand out,
they are not the entire body (politic),

Still, I sigh, watch the birds fly,
read the horror tales, feel the feels,
they’re not as scary as what is real–

the ghosts of 215,000, rising, plus,
and thus, what’s to come with the scary clown,
while the Constitution is whittled down

we ache, body and soul,
as the fluff-headed victors sound the death knell
to tell of democracy’s demise—yet the story to tell

is that the moon still hums, the stars still sing,
and scatter the light brightening
all, it radiates, falls

in ripples, like the stone I cast
into the river, watch the ripples pass
flowing on, the present an illusion, it doesn’t last,

past to future, goes, in ridges and waves
like light, with colors we won’t ever see,
an essence remaining, like a ghost of ancestors, or you, or me,

the whispers of earth, the songs of the sea.

Delaware River at Red Bank Battlefield. Autumn Splendor. ©️Merril D. Smith, October 2020

Merril’s Movie/Theater/Book Club:
We watched a live-streamed production this week, STATE VS. NATASHA BENINA, which you probably won’t be able to access, but if you do get a chance, it’s well-worth it. I wondered how a production done live on Zoom would be (the audience was muted, and I turned off my camera, as I didn’t want people to see me in pjs in our living room). The actress was so good, portraying a Russian teen, who was raised in an orphanage, and now is accused of a crime. The audience is judge and jury, and votes at the end, but that serves more as a lead-in to discussion.

We were going to go out to a winery in the late afternoon yesterday, but the weather was not very nice, so we cancelled. I made a dinner, similar to one we might have had after Philadelphia theater dates, and we watched a filmed play, which is now on Amazon Prime. What the Constitution Means to Me is Heidi Schreck’s award-winning play, and it is excellent. I have heard pieces of it on the radio, as she discussed how she paid for her college education by giving speeches as a teen on the Constitution, but the entire play is really wonderful, as she weaves her personal history, her family’s history of domestic violence, women’s rights, and other issues into the narrative.

We also watched the new version of Rebecca on Netflix. We both enjoyed it. I like Lily James, though she seems rather more attractive and charming than the book character, and Kristin Scott Thomas is very good as Mrs. Danvers. From what I remember, this version does not have the overall menacing, Gothic feel of the Hitchcock movie or the book. I think it’s better to take it as it is, and not compare it to either.

We’re also started watching Borgen on Netflix, a Danish political drama. I like it, though it took a couple of episodes for me to get into it (and to understand the Danish political system).

And I finished The Year of Witching, and I’m almost finished with Home Before Dark. Horror reading—not nearly as scary as reality.

Lost and Found

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Once upon a glimmer

of desire and hope,

 

the girl

opened a book

 

and she was lost

in the pages,

 

in the story,

she found

 

she was not alone

and there were other

 

worlds, and truth–

it was out there–

 

but also, within her.

 

Cécile_Anker_1886

Albert Anker, “Cécile Anker, 1886” [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

For dVerse, Lillian has asked us to write a poem beginning with “Once upon a  ____, ” using any word except for the word “time.”

 

 

 

 

Horror, Storms, Pass the Wine, and Look for Grace—Monday Morning Musings

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Monday Morning Musings:

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

–Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“(“Do not equate nationalism with patriotism,” Perry warned Juliet. “Nationalism is the first step on the road to Fascism.”)”

–Kate Atkinson, Transcription

A storm comes and roars,

in waves upon the shores

and tears through towns

with rains and winds—the sounds

of climate wars

where there were homes

there’s now a void–

so much destroyed.

IMG_0187

Here we have only some rain and wind

nothing unmoored, nothing unpinned

from where it should be

the only horror we see

comes on TV,

where things go bumping in the night–

though not as scary as reality

yet we wish and keep hope afloat

that we’ll live to see things be all right.

 

Once we had a president who sang “Amazing Grace,”*

now we have one without a trace

of empathy or wisdom,

separating families,

putting them in prisons

behind barbed wire—

and who does he admire?

Dictators!

(and those who feed his ego—

please all of you, just go!)

 

So, as the days get dreary

I try to be cheery,

find color in pumpkins and leaves

FullSizeRender 620

that fall on ground and eaves.

I cook and bake

Homemade pizza
Artisan Bread

hope to shake—

if not the world—

then wake a few,

hope and wish,

the good and true

will outlast, outshine

redefine the new.

 

On a chilly day,

we brighten our spirits

with family, a dog, and wine

spend time conversing

about this and that

we chat about birth

(with a bit of mirth)

as my son-in-law is studying

to be a nurse–

(quite a path he’s traversed

to get there)

and we sit as children ask

to pet their cute pup—

until at last the time is up

and we must go

our separate ways—

well, it’s getting too chilly to stay.

 

FullSizeRender 619

Clouds over William Heritage Winery

I wake to morning mist–and sigh

think, today, I’ll take my apples

and bake a pie.

IMG_0202

We’ll eat it as evening

darkens the room

perhaps to brighten

fall’s impending gloom.

The cats will sleep on cushions nearby,

and we will bid the day goodbye.

 

 

*I was reminded of this when I heard Joan Baez on the New Yorker Radio Hour. Here the song is illustrated in a lovely, moving short animated film.

We watched the first episode of Netflix’s sort of adaptation of the Haunting of Hill House.  The original movie terrified me. I thought the first episode of this version (if you can get over that it’s not actually an adaptation of the story) was OK, but not great. But we will watch the next episode.

But we also watched the movie Eighth Grade–which really was wonderful–even though we all know that age has its own horrors.

I’m reading Transcription by Kate Atkinson. It’s wonderful.