• Forever in the Stream

    In the Fall my appetite leads me away from  prose and seeks out verse. As the earth turns brown and the trees turn red and gold, it feels natural to reach for the kaleidoscopic lens of poetry. The poets Mary Oliver and T.S. Eliot are personal favorites – her love of nature and living  and the cadences of Eliot’s Four Quartets, “Murder in the Cathedral” and other poems. I feel the rhythms of the poor people of Canterbury as they mirror  persons left behind in our world.  What can I do to better understand Eliot’s powerful cycle of life (renewal) and death? How can I walk in the woods seeing…

  • Crows and Their Agile Thinking

    Autumn Garden at Gristmill We are experiencing beautiful autumn days, so we drove from New York City to Gristmill cottage in Dutchess County, where everything is changing colors and textures. The summer garden is over, but Fall is making its colorful splash with a finale of orange nasturtiums, rose-tinged hydrangeas, yellow hollyhocks and purple morning glories. My cat Tabitha, who is almost 15 years old and blind, can smell the catnip growing in plentiful supply throughout the edges of the garden and she is rolling around in a fever. Nothing is really over here; it might be a little suspended, but the temporary lull is a gift since the weeding…