I find no comfort in the shade
Under the branch of the Great Ash.
I remember the mist
of our ancient past.
As I speak to you in the present,
My ancient eyes
see the terrible future.

~from Doom of Odin, from the Book of Heroes

I could distinguish the shape of her bosom, her arms, her thighs, just as I remember them now, just as now, when the Moon has become that flat, remote circle, I still look for her as soon as the first sliver appears in the sky, and the more it waxes, the more clearly I imagine I can see her, her or something of her, but only her, in a hundred, a thousand different vistas, she who makes the Moon the Moon and, whenever she is full, sets the dogs to howling all night long, and me with them.
~from "The Distance of the Moon", Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino

there's never a hero - in a battle of egos - there's never a winner of the quick draw

silhouettes above the cradle hold me down - they won't let me go the wrong way - my mother taught me all the fables, told me how - in the end all the sinners have to pay

The first true snow of the season fell on campus today. Although the ground is still too warm for it to stick, clumps of snow began to gather on the evergreens and in the cruxes of bare-branched trees, lending a softened look to the skeletal twigs. The air was crisp and cool - clean for the first time in weeks. In the early morning cold I picked up a leaf, its edges rimed in glittering frost, and it left a perfect green silhouette on the icy grass below. The gulls stood isolated instead of in flight, their necks hunched deep into their feathers, giving an occasional peevish whine.

Hailing from coastal Maine, people don't often believe me when I claim that the gulls are different at home. They argue that a herring gull, Larus argentatus, is a herring gull anywhere. I beg to differ. On the rocky coast, the call of a seagull immediately conjures the vision and sound of waves crashing on the granite, the bronchial cough of diesel engines, and the raucous calls of lobstermen on their morning rounds. It is a series of high screeches, almost similar to that of the osprey. Inland, gulls cry like children, a mewing baby's whimper, or a single strangled squawk. These are not the seagulls one sees wheeling in flocks just aft of the lobsterboats or perched atop the spindles. These are trash gulls.

sail away with me honey - i put my heart in your hands - sail away with me honey now, now, now - sail away with me - what will be will be - i wanna hold you now

There is an iron post, about three feet tall and two inches across, that sticks out of the lawn outside my building. I know it is there because I have very nearly taken myself out at the kneecaps on it several times. I don't know what it is, or what it used to be, only that it juts from the grass almost directly in the path that I usually take to cross the lawn.

It disappeared yesterday.

I was walking with my eyes on the ground and suddenly swerved out of habit, just knowing without even seeing it that I was about to run into the thing. But when I looked up to see how close a call it had been, it wasn't there. Later I looked for it from my third-floor window, from which I can usually see it hiding through the pine fronds, and it still eluded me.

It is back again today.

I know because I walked into it.

Farmer's Almanac "Best Days", November 2004
• Bake 15, 16, 22-24
• Can Fruits and Vegetables 2-4, 11, 30
• Dry Fruits and Vegetables 5, 6
• Jams and Jellies 11, 26
• Cut Firewood 12-25
• Cut Hair 9, 10, 13, 14, 17-21
• Mow to Increase Growth 12-25
• Mow to Retard Growth 1-11, 26-30
• Castrate Farm Animals 13-21
• Harvest 5-11
• Prune Trees 15, 16
• Wean 13-21
• Hunt 12-18
• Fish Mornings: 3, 4, 30 Evenings: 13, 14
• Quit a Habit or Smoking 1, 5-8, 27-29