Christmas morning greeted us one year with a thick blanket of vivid snow and Six turkeys perched in the bare branches of the mock apple tree. Like a song offered through those boughs, …My true love sent to me. Christmas morning last year, another thick blanket of snow. No turkeys, no flutter of cardinals by the feeder. Only a… Read More
Hunting in Texas
Hunting in Texas When I was between the ages of 10 and 14 years, my grandfather took me deer hunting. Parts of hunting in central Texas did not appeal to me. But I loved the company. Papa, as we called our grandfather, offered a weekend of cold wind, dust in your eyes and grit between your teeth, the… Read More
Breath
400 million years ago, at the time trees appear on earth so too, creatures of the sea. Surviving mass extinctions and super-continental fissures enough life remained. In the fullness of time, ocean creatures, swam upon the swash line, peeked above the water’s edge, beheld a distant horizon abundant with space time. Without understanding, A protean strength heaves a creature above… Read More
How To Raise A Child
Say you are a child. A wide black paint brush in your eager hand set to paint a white, deep bed freezer in the backyard wash house. The paint color, a rust-proofing, log-cabin brown. Say you feel important. You have a Saturday afternoon task. A job to protect the freezer from the ravages of a humid balmy gulf coast—- air… Read More
Charlie the Ram
The summer of my tenth year I learned to jump. It wasn’t Molly who taught me to jump. Her pet ram did. That was during a week spent with my friend Molly on her family’s home near the hill country of Texas. Charlie held court beneath the blue shade of a live oak, in the front yard of the Molesworth’s… Read More
Hurricanes
I can hardly remember my father being at home during my youth- except for Christmas. And hurricanes. One image remains in my mind: the night one hurricane descended upon our south Texas city of Corpus Christi. Was it Beulah or Cecelia? I can’t remember the name of the hurricane nor which of my five siblings were present that night. I… Read More