One day you wake up to icicles and yet another dark, distressing gray morning, powdered with snow. And then, the very next thing you know, you’re marveling at the miraculous resurgence of greens and yellows and purples scattered along the sides of the road, the warm sunshine cascading through trees, their skinny bare branches … More Breath and Air and the Mysteries of Spring
Black is the colour … “Black is the colour of my true love’s hair, his face is something wondrous fair,” goes a traditional ballad sung in the Appalachian Mountains, with origins likely from Scotland. I started thinking about colors and food when I read of the passing of Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. Heaney wrote of … More Black is the Colour of My … Food
“Home,” he mocked gently. “Yes, what else but home? It all depends on what you mean by home. Of course he’s nothing to us, any more Than was the hound that came a stranger to us Out of the woods, worn out upon the trail.” “Home is the place where, when you have to go … More Home is the Place Where …
“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore Cheers to all of you, wherever you may be, whatever you may be doing, whenever you’re dreaming. __________________________ *Quote from Brad Paisley © 2013 C. Bertelsen
Sometimes life hands me gifts in sly ways. A few years ago, I sat in the sunlit reading room at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard, worshiping at the shrine of the M. F. K. Fisher papers, pulling blue files out of green storage boxes, luxuriating in the correspondence between that brilliant writer and Julia Child, … More The Powers of an Unsung Poet: Finding the Universe in a Fragment
The crescent moon rises in the early night sky, a scythe among the clouds, sharp against the fading blue and the sun’s dying light. Cooking by the light of the full moon, the shadows in the corners illuminated, tugging at my mind. I bend low, hunting for a knife to chop the onion, slice the … More Moonstruck, a Meditation on Earth’s Moon
And so are flowers. *Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948) © 2013 C. Bertelsen
The lavender lingers on my sloping hillside, autumn rain running in rivulets between the dying leaves. At summer’s peak, the purple flowers tantalized the bees and butterflies and me, the glorious scent perfuming the air of evening and morning both. No lambs frolicked in the lavender this year, but maybe someday a friend’s weanlings will … More Lavender, France’s Balm for the Soul