Just a little beauty for your day — a few photos of my garden this morning! The St. John’s Fire / scarlet sage in my garden looked pretty bleak in late May and early June, but in the last week or so even the most barren-looking plants started to sprout new flowers. I’m kind of … Read more
This poem began as a response to Mary Oliver’s “I Have Decided” (found in A Thousand Mornings) and quickly flew off in its own direction, until during my revisions I had to cut the response part of it entirely. The original remains scribbled in my notebook, which I’m glad I had with me at the … Read more
Fall seems to be the time of speeding up — but also of slowing down. The academic year begins; schools and families launch into a flurry of activity; summer sleepiness rouses into the frenzy of harvest and winterization (and I don’t just mean the fields and tractors). On the other hand, something in the soul … Read more
This “poem” is really a reflection on a memory. It was September 12 of my first autumn in Novosibirsk, and it was the first truly cold, autumn-like day in what had been a strangely long summer. To escape the chill, I walked into my favorite bookstore (Kapital or КапиталЪ, unfortunately also the most expensive) and … Read more
Today’s translated poem is a bit less fall-positive than you might expect from this blog by now, but it’s one that rather stole my heart while I was in Russia, as its simplicity made it easy to learn and remember. The text is “Autumn” by Alexei Nikolaevich Plescheev, a revolutionary poet of the 19th century — … Read more