Browse Topics

Four Poems From Ancient China

Call next door, ask / neighbors on the west if they can spare / any wine, and suddenly a jarful comes / across the fence — fresh, unfiltered. We / open mats beside Meandering River’s / long currents, crystalline winds arrive, / and you’re startled it’s already autumn.

Riding Out At Evening

At dusk, everything blurs and softens. / From here out over the long valley, / the fields and hills pull up / the first slight sheets of evening, / as, over the next hour,  / heavier, darker ones will follow.

We Used To Have So Much To Say

I never told you this, because I was worried you would judge me too harshly, but the worms died. There, I said it. My loyal, silent kitchen-scrap eaters, my earthworms, all melted into a puddle of gore and oozing black death, right on our porch.

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.

After The Flood

When we went back outside, Tom had stopped sawing and was repotting the bare vine. “You never know,” he said. He’s right, of course. We don’t know what the world will bring, what power lies in a salvaged tomato plant, what we all do to build back, survive, thrive.

Sunbeams

In spite of our rather boastful talk about progress, and our pride in the gadgets of civilization, there is, I think, a growing suspicion — indeed, perhaps an uneasy certainty — that we have been sometimes a little too ingenious for our own good. . . . We are beginning to wonder whether our power to change the face of nature should not have been tempered with wisdom for our own good, and with a greater sense of responsibility for the welfare of generations to come.

Rachel Carson

What Will You Save Today?

“What are you going to do with it?” Nan whispers. “Do with what?” asks the boy who stole the vial. “I saw you,” Nan says. “I’m going to swallow it,” he says. His eyes are wide and a little disturbing. “Why?” Nan asks. “I want a horse inside of me,” he says.