After a less-than-harmonious game of croquet, I lie back on the grass. Overhead, a rainbow. All this day, toiling away at things that may or may not matter…. and in this pause, a rainbow? Makes me wonder what else I missed.
Such a moon—
the thief
pauses to sing.
— Buson
Snow falls on my 13-year-old’s hair as we walk through the falling snow. 13-year-old girls are empirically unable to wear hats. Ski helmets, sure. But hats? Get real.
Nonetheless, I ask her to walk with me. Beneath a pine tree, our neighbor’s streetlamp glows day and night at the end of her driveway, weirdly reminding me of the lamppost in Narnia. In this Vermont transformed to the otherworldly by so much snow might a faun appear around a snowbank? Has this neighbor left the lamp lit for someone? Or has she merely closed her curtains and forgotten?
We’re keeping tabs on the neighbor’s progress on his pale blue Honda. Before the storm, he’d removed the hood and laid it on a snowbank. With the recent storm, the car is buried again.
We speculate. Did he return the hood before the recent storm? Oooo, we hope so, thinking of the car engine open to 10 more inches of snow. Implicitly, we’re rooting for him, as if repairing this vehicle is synonymous with spring.
The Chinese junk
not stopping
moving on through the mist
— Buson
Pre-storm….
Outside the town clerk’s office, a little after 8 last night, I’m talking with an another adult while the kids jump around in what feels like balminess at 14 above zero when I suddenly shout out, Look at the moon!
Ringed by a rainbow, the luminous half-moon hangs over the town clerk’s building — a former one-room schoolhouse.
Our friends head home one way, my daughter and I the other.
Woodbury, Vermont, with its population less than a 1,000 souls, has a 3-person selectboard. I’m there as the town librarian. Most of the school board is there. Members of the public. The worry is to how to retain the tiny elementary school the state seems intent to close.
The kids are not in the meeting. They’re hanging out at the clerk’s main desk, reading graphic novels, and raiding the clerk’s candy jar. They’re giggling about kid stuff that’s important to kids.
I want the kids know this version of democracy — a group of people wearing fleece and hand-knit sweaters, jammed into a tiny room, our knees bumping, some of us liking each other and some maybe not at all, but all of talking, thinking things through — what’s the wisest course of action? how do we tend the common good?
It’s the first snowfall —
When it melts again we’ll see
Dewdrops on the grass.
— Buson
In the garden this late afternoon, a slow-moving bumblebee sways on a Mexican sunflower blossom tucked beneath a great sunflower leaf, its tender orange spared from frost. With a knife, I cut broccoli.
Every bit of sunlight we can get, I take — and urge my daughters to take, too.
The trees are throwing their leaves away. This time of year, some trees hold green canopies, while others have already emptied their branches.
Calligraphy of geese
against the sky —
the moon seals it.
— Buson
Gabriela, Wheelbarrow
Stopping to buy gas late in the evening, I walk into D&L and immediately stop: the familiar clerk is mopping the floor. It’s so muggy, even long past dark, that he holds the back of his wrist to his sweating forehead.
Go ahead, he tells me. Walk on it. And he crosses the wet tile floor himself.
We talk a little about this hot, sultry summer, now winding down. Already, I’m waking in the dark, turning on the light over the kitchen sink to feed the mewling cats.
In this liquor and gas station on the edge of town, the clerks are sharp-eyed, scanning the crowd, but this evening, it’s just him and I. He leans on his mop handle, nearly finished with his day’s shift, nearly closing time.
I mention that six months from now, in lightless January, I’m going to be complaining to him about the subzero cold.
He laughs out loud. Oh, boy, I can’t wait.
Outside, the gas station lights are an illuminated bubble in the surrounding darkness. Most people sleep at night in this little town. I’m sure there’s mothers and fathers awake with crying babies, the heartsick or troubled who wander their dim rooms, drug users or simply those who are sleepless. The crickets whirr their song, this still night, with not even any passing-through traffic. August: season of t-shirts and sandals, and, this morning, rain sweetly falling.
The Chinese junk
not stopping
moving on through the mist
— Buson
Oh, ode to June in all her lovely greenery.
Remember being 19-years-old? Remember desire, desire, desire?
The summer river.
It’s happy to walk across it.
My hands with zori sandal.
—Buson
Dog River, Berlin, Vermont
Stony Soil Vermont 