The Wheels of Change

Everyone had a tractor.

It didn’t matter the size of the field (and the forest was always waiting in the wings here, always)

There was always a tractor.

Multi-purpose, the tractors

Used for fields and furrows, crops and the chasing of rogue livestock.

That changed.

The forest came back when they were gone,

Sinking deep roots into tended soil,

Reclaiming what could never be fully given.

The tractors left too,

Some in pieces,

Some as museum pieces.

Instruments of forgotten change,

Of small furrows in overgrown fields.

History moves not in lines, but in turning wheels

I am always fascinated by the short, sharp interchanges between those who would live here and the land they inhabit.

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For more interfaces between the natural and the unnatural, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

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An Act of Preservation

When my grandmother died, one of the hardest acts was to empty her pantry.

Food is uncomfortably revealing-

A marker of personality, events, and secret pleasures.

Neatly labeled packages and cans alike all formed a clear and present

Vision of her standing in her pantry, bent over her future meals.

Those acts we use to preserve the food we grow

Canning, smoking, pickling, drying

Bake the memories into the process.

Those jams are from the summer when the sun baked the ground and the sky

Those apples from the cooler August where summer and fall were impossible to separate.

Taste is a powerful connection

A bridge between time and people

The flavour of home-made jam

Both a summer warm with potential

And a now empty pantry

Stripped of taste.

The contents change, but the memories remain

Taste is such an integral connection to people and places.

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For more stories dwelling on the importance of taste, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

Gone to Seed

I grow a forest of lettuce

A precursor to the more stable forest

Present at the edge of all my gardens

I grow lettuce that is bold and tall

That is not confined by our Ideas of what lettuce

Should and should not be

Dazzling spirals and intricate fractals

Line themselves in an expanding row of greenery

Across the range of vision

The slight bitterness

On the tongue

Is a small price to pay

For ephemeral beauty

Uncurtailed

Unconstrained.

There are few things more beautiful and fleeting than the burst of pre-autumn greenery

I love the final moments of summer in my Northern garden.

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For more plants and impressive forests, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

Look Down

In the city, I was always looking down.

Avoiding eye contact, avoiding obstacles-

Avoiding.

In this quieter place,

In this place of less people, less potential chance of collisions,

I’ve noticed that I move with purpose.

Observe the tree ahead, the mountains in the distance,

The sky, sharp and intrusive, at the edges of my vision.

Until I stumble,

I miss the subtleties beneath my feet.

The world of branches and ferns,

Of squirrel middens and deathly struggles.

To take my eyes from where I’m going,

To where I am,

Opens vast worlds of possibility.

A field of horsetails,

Breeze-touched and swaying

In an endless sea of green.

So many small worlds beneath us

I have a deep love for the tiny connections around us.

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For more worlds, small and otherwise, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.

The Skins We Shed

Few creatures hold the shape of their childhood.

For some, the transition is easy-

A slow stretching of the skin to follow

The slow stretching of the self.

Others

Are more violent.

The ghosts of dead childhoods

Cling to the reeds in the ponds

Tuck themselves under leaves and logs

The frail skeletal remains

Of a form too small

To contain all the potential

Of adulthood.

Frozen moments on the verge of flight

I value the physical touchstones of transition.

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For more transitions, physical and otherwise, my fantasy novel, The Guests of Honor, is available here. Its sequel, With Honor Intact, can be found here.