Though they crawl on the gilded borders of illuminated manuscripts from another time, often seen as marginalia, I see moths as living oracles who do not speak but quietly land on the surface of things, often as a disturbance calling our attention to the importance of all that is hidden.
excerpt from the Foreword by Terry Tempest Williams in the volume of photography entitled, Mariposas Nocturnas by Emmit Gowin, 2017
History has failed us, but no matter.
opening line from the book, Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, 2017
Lesson IX–Conserving Wild Dragons
It is vital that the student realize that dragons are wild creatures and, as such, will resist taming.
from the book The Dragonology Handbook — A Practical Course in Dragons by Ernest Drake, 2005
red books hiding in a hand painted pot
old lanterns resting in a crumbling bird bath
pink columbine shaking in a summer storm
“Marriages have stages. They have incarnations, almost,” Mercy explains. “You can be in a good marriage and you can be in a bad marriage, and they can both be the same one but just at different times.”
from French Braid, by Anne Tyler, 2022
An exquisite cup, less than two inches across, of felted plant, fern or dandelion-seed down, covered so perfectly with moss and lichens and fastened with spider webs as to appear a mere protuberance on the limb, and lined with a layer of the finest down.
from Birds of America, 1936 – Garden City Publishing Company, Inc.
“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”
from Damage by Josephine Hart, 1991
“Life seems to have no beginning and no ending. Only the steady expansion of trunk and root, the slow pileup of duff and debris, the lap of water before it becomes ice, the patter of raindrops before they turn to snowflakes.”
from Woodswoman by Anne LaBastille, 1976
stacked
and waiting
in a mental cue—
one, melting into another,
morphing,
molting—
parchment paper
scraps of memories
spanishwoods 