Hidden Worlds

Merlin Sheldrake On The Unseen Life Around Us

Fungi are decentralized. They’re able to coordinate their behavior without anything resembling a brain. They can connect perception and action without having a special place to do so. The coordination somehow takes place everywhere at once, and also nowhere in particular.

Small Animals

A few times a year, especially in spring, one of my cats clambers through the flap in the door carrying some fresh dilemma for me.

The Chicken Equation

To say that the Trump years have taken their toll on our already strained relationship would fall woefully short. It’s like a natural disaster has hit, and I have to keep updating my homeowner’s-insurance claim every time I find more damage.

Bowl, Large Cloth, Pair Of Chopsticks

The air is still. The governor is on the radio: “This could be the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfire in our state’s history.” I start vacuuming. It’s not until Amy gets home an hour later that we begin to outline what needs to be done: We need cat carriers to transport the cats. We need provisions for the animals. We need our medications. I am demonstrating how much we need our medications.

The Quiet Room

She read a brief passage in a small, clear voice that will live on in my memory. Fluent in sounding out words she didn’t know, she gleaned tones from everyday verbs that I’d never dreamed they possessed, and conferred a strange new life on faded old nouns, as one might draw a hidden thread of some brilliant color from an old rug.

The Lovely Harry, Philip Larkin, And Me

At the end of our weekly sessions, as I’m about to walk out the door, I hand The Lovely Harry a manila envelope of poems I’ve written that week. Some weeks it’s a thin envelope; other weeks the pages inside push against the seams with their folded energy.

Things To Do In Buffalo, Wyoming, While Waiting Out The Coronavirus

Chop wood, shovel snow, bake bread, / make dinner, and after take the compost / to the bin, nearly full though only half / decomposed.

Backyard Mercy

A fruit fly fell in my fine crystal glass / half full of five-dollar wine. / Annoyed, I almost flung the final sips / behind a rosebush.

Lucky Pick

At the library / you can ask for a “lucky pick,” / meaning the librarian will choose / a novel for you based on what you tell her, / like blind dating or a toy / buried deep in the bottom of a box / of cereal, because there are still things / in life that might surprise us.

My Mother Is A Peaceful Ghost

In my dreams my mother keeps walking out of the kitchen singing, / You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. / She never sings past the first verse.

Spam From The Dead

And two months after the cancer finally ate through / the last tissues that separated him from death, / I get a message from his e-mail address, / urging me to click on a link I know I shouldn’t