Scant Speaking.

December 7, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

The afternoon takes me around two lakes in a kind of work I relish. One visit involves a visit with a contractor at a house he’s building. We muse how water seeks its own wise course. As I drive away, I keep thinking about the immense boulders a king-sized excavator unearthed from that mucky soil. The boulders are some of the most righteous beings I’ve met in weeks.

On my way home, I stop at the high school and take a brisk walk through the woods before an evening meeting. I see someone I know, and we talk about projects at the high school, what money is coming in, and what’s still needed. These days, I often find myself in terse conversations with acquaintances, as though we’re all gnawing a cigarette between our teeth, our backs against a proverbial wall, eyeing the horizon.

Then I’m on my way, and he to his.

Fox in the Night.

December 5, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

My daughter brings home a booster shot and sticks my arm. That night, I wake with dreams of email and work, of words that move through my mind, and then all of that passes. The cats and I lie before the wood stove, watching the flicking red embers through the glass. After each of my children’s births, I felt as though I had reached through a channel and touched the other world, that realm where I originated and where someday again I’ll return. A friend’s brother passes from Covid. She tells me, God must have a plan, but I don’t know what it is. For a moment, I think wicked thoughts about Catholicism, but that passes, too. Who am I to judge her faith, what will carry her and her family through hard days? In these December days of scant light and long nights, my daughter comes into my room and opens my window, waking me. A fox screams. We kneel at the window, gazing at the snow on the giant mock orange beside our house. The fox shrieks again. We listen, hard. In my mind, I begin imaging a message here — the two of us, the cold air, the moonless night, wild creature. Then I quit and simply listen.

Wild. Domestic.

December 3, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment

My daughter’s out of school early today and headed out to ski. I caution her, Watch the roads, be careful of ice, mindful of blowing snow, and look out for creeps. She hurries out; she has stuff to do.

Meanwhile, my head’s full of all kinds of things, work meetings and a piece I’m writing and am I going to change that busted headlight bulb.

December, and we’re in a pause again, the pandemic ranging around. Schools are open. ICUs overwhelmed. We get boosters. Lost masks are caught in the branches of trees. My sweet cat grooms in a puddle of sunlight, utterly pleased with his work. I pet his head, thinking of my daughter with her sister’s borrowed coat, heading on her own up into the snowy and windy mountains, her eyes gleaming with joy. I keep typing.

I learned one thing: the world is simultaneously collapsing everywhere. The only difference is that in Tvayan [in Russia], they live knowingly amid the wreckage.”

— Nastassja Martin, In the Eye of the Wild

Truth at the Door.

December 1, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

I stopped for a flock of crows this morning on my drive to work, half a dozen or so of them, pecking at roadkill. In the slow way of November, the birds contemplated me and then turned back to their feast.

For a moment, I got out of the car, just me and the crows and the morning too cold to be damp. Eight crows, two yellow lines, one dead tree, and all that snowy field and sky around me.

Driving, I had been thinking of the poet Lucille Clifton, who wrote the saddest poem I’ve ever read, “The Lost Baby Poem.” The poem that needs no commentary, nothing further.

Clifton wrote about sorrow, but plenty more, too. She advised, “You might as well answer the door, my child,/the truth is furiously knocking.” It’s a line I’ve returned to over and over in my life, one of my guiding stars. This November morning, cawing crows opened my Subaru door.

Distance.

November 30, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 7 Comments

We’re deep in the season of darkness now, night so thick at 5PM I could hide my hands in it. At work this morning, my daughter texts me news of a murder-suicide in a nearby town. The deaths occurred this morning while my youngest and I were eating granola and yogurt, talking idly about Monday morning.

I’ve lived in Vermont darn near forever, and this marks the fifth murder in a handful of weeks. While my daughter and I cook dinner we talk about violence in Vermont — domestic, and not. There’s nothing I can say to change any of this. But I tell my daughter she’s part of the world, now frequently without me or her older sister. In my own mother speak, I remind her that she has her own part in the world, too.

Pay attention, I urge.

In the dark, I chop wood beneath the stars.

Bits of Colored Glass.

November 27, 2021 / Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

I step out in the morning dark to get kindling from the barn. I’m grateful for many things, but a hot hearth is high on my gratitude list. The sprawling cats concur.

In the night, snow has fallen, a cold wind blows, and winter has spread out her garments. She’s here to stay.

At Thanksgiving, my daughters asked why I didn’t stay in the Pacific Northwest, where I went to graduate school. One reason was that I missed the drama of New England’s seasons. On this late November morning, I remind myself of this love for Vermont, that the need for winter’s stillness and beauty is driven as deeply into my body and soul as May’s blue squill around my house.

Here’s a link to a radio show at WDEV in Waterbury, Vermont, I did with my former US Attorney Christina Nolan, who appears in Unstitched — a woman I greatly admire.

And, a few lines from poet Adelaide Crapsey: