“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
the sun rose, wrapped tightly within the silence of the morning fog
at first, it is heavy winter
and then it is lightly not winter–
lasting a tiny moment, allowing the crocuses and the snowdrops
to sing their siren songs of spring,
knowing all the while—
it will be winter through the window in March again
she writes poems with her eyes closed
in the darkness of the night,
but the words escape her memory
with the early-morning light
puppies in the snow
cold winter landscapes
greys and blues and soft amber horizons
a bare beauty—
solitary,
exposed,
implied,
intuited
early, with a hush and a heavy silence,
while the kitchen smells of coffee
and the pup sleeps under warm blankets,
the sun calls at the door
dark thoughts
seep into the dampness
of the dying day
“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
spanishwoods 