AT BREAKFAST THIS MORNING, I set the eggs on the counter and then stared a moment at the carton—brooding, I suppose. A dozen eggs always puts me in mind of fundamental things: whole notes or stony beaches, colored rings in a newborn’s crib. When I raise the lid, the...
I hunch in the porch shadows, feeling for the rough side of my key. After a few exploratory taps, I ease the blade into the lock then turn to face the sky. At half past four in the morning, the stars are still out. They winkle in the branches. I begin my walk, about...
One afternoon in Wyoming, I sat on a hilltop. The wind seemed not only to blow the grasses but the sunlight itself, sweeping it into my skin, a warm jangle. I was having some down time in a high place. Having slowed, I could see how much a rushed life had whiplashed...
One morning I saw a stick in a tree. Curved and broken, it lay across a forked bough about six feet out from the trunk. The buds had yet to open so I could see the whole of it, black against a red sky. The tree itself, a young ash, stood in a park near my home. Late...
I once worked in a restaurant where a Dutch Masters box sat above the coffee machine. It had been there for years, a catch-all for earrings and lost keys. I looked at it every day. On a side panel were those six men in pilgrim clothing. One of them—the fellow seated...
My two boys, ages three and six, love a good bike ride and I take them out often. We travel on a single vehicle that includes a bicycle, a tag-along, and a trailer. My boys call this elaborate rig the “Burley Train.” Come Friday evenings, if the weather is fair, we...
The way to work is behind the book factory. The parking is free for anyone willing to walk a few blocks to where the office buildings begin. Some days I see a woman up on the loading bay, leaning on the bricks and working at the pace of the morning light. She is there...
July 6 A wet morning. The clouds scud by, looking dark and broken. They have that startled watchfulness of things flying past. I hunch on the gravel lot, making coffee. Six scoops, and one for the pot. Across the ravine, the yellow grasses of Bear Butte lift into fog:...
All the untidy activity continues,/awful but cheerful. –Elizabeth Bishop The Yellowstone River begins near the Continental Divide and roars down its famous rocks to the plains of eastern Montana. There, beneath a slower current its stones grow ghostly, then fad...
I live in an old neighborhood near a small downtown, just beyond the reach of the last parking meters. Any of the houses here would look stately and haunted perched on a hill somewhere, but as it is they’re all serried together down the long city blocks: most gables...