Still Learning How to Fly

What Matters One morning I arrive at her table [in the Orvieto marketplace] as Tomassina is taking cherries, fat as walnuts and chastely pink, from a pasta strainer and placing them on a small, unpolished…

Yes. “’—Night is drawing nigh—‘ For all that has been—Thanks! To all that shall be—Yes!” “To say Yes to life is at one and the same time to say Yes to oneself. Yes—even to that…

Transfiguration  “The broken are not always gathered, of course, and not all mysteries of the flesh are solved. . . . . Loved ones whose presence once filled us move into the distance; our eyes…

Dear Good Friends: I write this 2008 fall evening from a new address: 2225 Alpine #2A, Helena, MT 59601.  It’s a 1,000 square feet of simple, one-floor condo space, four miles south and east across…

Night Stars over snow, And in the west a planet Swinging below a star— Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, It is not far— It never will be far. Sara Teasdale…

WE DIE    for Carl Sagan We die despite appointments and feuds, while our toddler, who recently learned to say No, opens and shuts drawers a hundred times a day and our teen braces for…

Passages “Life is a long walk forward through the crowded cars of a passenger train, the bright world racing past beyond the windows, people on either side of the aisle. Strangers whose stories we never…

My Wishes for You   Nights too starry for fear, Noons like a golden chime, The confident gift of a year, To open one day at a time,   A tree from the garden of…

Godiva Country, Montana She’s a big country. Her undulationsroll and flow in the sun.  Those flanksquiver when the wind caresses the grass.Who turns away when so generous a bodyoffers to play hide-and-seek all summer?One shoulder…

To the lives we have lived, and to the ones ahead. * Dear Friends: We hope very much that this season finds you able to salute your past and to anticipate adventures, difficulties, blessings, and…