One doesn't have to cut browse for the reindeer galloping around in the old crabapple tree or take windfall apples and other fodder to t...

As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the upper Paleolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, t...

I lurch awake before sunrise and make coffee, then lean against the counter and wait for the day to begin. As always, there is the ardent ho...

Each dawn, kneeling before my hearth, Placing stick, crossing stick On dry eucalyptus bark Now the larger boughs, the log (With thanks to th...

It is still dark outside, and through the window comes the clatter of the wind skating across the roof with its freight of frozen twigs, the...

Tonight, I walk. I am watching the sky. I think of the people who came before me and how they knew the placement of the stars in the sky, wa...

As reluctant as I am to admit such things, I have been feeling rather down since the anniversary of Irv's passing last week, and there h...

There is always so much toing and froing this month, cards and postcards, home baking, wrapped gifts, tissue paper and ribbons, Christmas t...

Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body that are to come, the motions of the matter that held you. Rise up in the smoke of palo santo. Fal...

Early December days in this corner of the world are all too short, and they are cold. The wind is icy on our old bones, and they protest the...

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you put the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the ...

The day after tomorrow (Sunday) is the anniversary of my husband's passing from pancreatic cancer. Irv took his last breath at 9:23 AM o...

I have been trying to read the script cut in these hills— a language carved in the shimmer of stubble and the solid lines of soil, spoken in...

We have rung every possible seasonal weather change in recent days, the pendulum oscillating from snow and bitter cold to rain and above zer...

You really don't have to lose everything and travel to a remote valley to discover that the world is always rushing forward to teach us,...

This is a holiday tradition, my list of written materials about the winter holiday season and the return of the light to the north. Many of ...

Herons, geese and loons have departed for balmier lodgings somewhere further south. Rivers and lakes in the eastern Ontario highlands are s...

Praise the light of late November, the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones. Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees; though they ...

This morning's post takes its title from an old Scots name for the aurora borealis. Clear, cold winter nights are the best times for wat...