all in a day

peddling pumpkins

a hole where our old house used to be-

searching for artifacts

gathering offerings 

orphans, Adam and Amelia 

alfalfa from our field, special rocks 
and leaves for our parents 

hmmm...

rum victoria, coffee truffle, 

black walnut Cummings chocolates for us.

Ode to Oakridge

November's Rotting Apples

Everything’s looted, betrayed and traded,
black death’s wing’s overhead.
Everything’s eaten by hunger, unsated,
so why does a light shine ahead?

By day, a mysterious wood, near the town,
breathes out cherry, a cherry perfume.
By night, on July’s sky, deep, and transparent,
new constellations are thrown.

And something miraculous will come
close to the darkness and ruin,
something no-one, no-one, has known,
though we’ve longed for it since we were children.

-- anna akhmatova

The last harvest

before the bulldozers come...

O Apricot Tree

If you were a woman,

you would have produced

enough offspring in your lifetime

to populate a planet-

a tastefully sized planet,

like Mercury or Venus-

inhabited by delicious people

not too sweet,

or tarted up,

with names like Goldilocks,

and Nectar,

who don't overdo it on

the perfume.

A world I prefer

over asphalt, concrete

and cookie-cutter houses,

any day, any lifetime.

magic apple

from a hidden tree on the property

of my grandmother's old house.

(anything this delicious could only be magic)

Burning the Old Year(s)

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,

lists of vegetables, partial poems.

Orange swirling flame of days,

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn't,

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,

only the things I didn't do

crackle after the blazing dies.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

End Times

My family had an estate sale midsummer, and with summer coming to an end, it seems a good time to post these photos.

Saying goodbye, not only to a season, but to possessions, family property, an entire era -and sorting through the memories and emotions that get tangled up in the tangible.

Wish I had captured a photo of the old Story & Clark upright piano that I played (but mostly tortured) as a child, along with the rest of my siblings. I told a guy he could have it for a song. He said he really wanted to learn to play, so we ended up giving it to him for the mere promise of one. It was either that or catapulting it off a local mountain top.

Pioneer Day

The 24th of July is a Utah holiday, honoring the Mormon pioneers, my ancestors. We went on a trek to a local mountaintop, Francis Peak, my mother Esther used to look up at from her living room window...

Learned that is was named after

a Mormon pioneer woman,

Esther Francis - who knew?

After enjoying a hike and the cool mountain air, we visited the old family home resting at the foot of this mountain , and harvested some apricots, in the tradition of the pioneers, and my dear mother Esther.

ancestral apples

I picked bushels of apples from the trees my grandfather planted

on our family farm forever ago. I unearthed the old harvest ladder,

and climbed as high as it took me.

I looked down and saw the ghost of my mother, lamenting the rotting apples,

that she would have made into applesauce and pies.

The Yellow Transparents were her favorite. Mine too.

I can taste the tartness of her applesauce, the crisp sweetness of her pies,

in every delicious bite...