A sudden summer storm.
We have come to expect the unexpected - abrupt changes in weather. Wind and clouds and rain and snow are no longer predictable. One can almost feel the earth rumbling beneath us, pits of fire and sudden sinkholes in which creatures that have never seen daylight drift slowly through black seaweed and wavering reeds.
I lean out the window streaked with rain and stare at the battened-down buds of the daylilies as heavy rain slashes across the pavement of the parking lot.
Dark, shining river rivulets wind sinuously across sidewalks. The mottled white birch shivers in a gust of wind.
May 29, 2012: Here in Brattleboro, the heat hugs the ground as dark clouds hover over the mountain; the air is as silent as a drone and as oppressive. I cannot look at the video of 49 children posted on YouTube, a video that shows bloody bodies, executed at...
December 6, 2010: Driving south on Interstate 91 this morning as I crossed the border into Massachusetts, I saw a blue sky with patches of pink clouds shaped in a huge cross whose vertical part touched the earth. Long lines of evergreens stretched on either side of gray asphalt,
How many of us understand the extent to which the British Petroleum oil spill has disrupted the lives of families? Months later, when the oil spill is no longer hitting the headlines, the shrimpers' boats sit idle in harbors, and thousands of fisherman have lost their jobs. Feed the Children trucks move into the cities with hundreds of clamoring children. A reporter on NPR speaks of these Gulf Coast fishermen as the last of the hunter/gatherers who feel they must...
Homeless/Anything Helps/God Bless is printed in charcoal on a torn piece of cardboard. I am getting off Interstate 91 at Exit 1 this October afternoon. Clouds scuttle across the sky. The bare branches of the trees reach up like thin arms. The owner of the sign bends over to light a cigarette. He jots down something with a pencil on a scrap of white paper. He does not look at the cars that stop at the red light.