Something Perfect
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Three Walks
One was just out my back door. The sun was sinking. It seemed like summer was sinking with it, and I had an unquenchable desire to fill myself — douse myself, even — with an abundance of life. The first steps were easy, as there was a path, and I had been there before. I knew these bees and crickets, these rustlings below my waist. But I would not stop there, oh no. I would go deeper. And it was indeed like diving, for I was soon among golden rod higher than my head, and I was placing my feet in depths and darknesses that I could not see. I knew the earth had to rise up again, for there was a hill just beyond, but there was a moment of wondering if I would make it, if instead I might just be swallowed up, lost amid a sea of yellow. I pulled my hood around my head. Stepped. Stepped. How was it, I wondered, that in such a short season things could grow so tall and wild? Beads of sweat formed on my brow. When my eyes finally peeked again above the surface — my clothes coated in thin gold
Bill Holm
Hello Bill. When I mention your name in Minnesota, there are always some folks who start to cry. And it's not because you poked fun at their habits or told the truth (often the same thing). It's because they loved you . They loved your writing, yes, but they also loved you. Who you were. As I've held your books this past year, I've turned to your picture on jacket covers and book backs, and it seems there was always a mass of hair, a deep beard, warm sweaters. Just from this, I think, had I known you I would have loved you, too. But I didn't know you, so I must send these little claps to where they will flitter through the grasses and occasional treetops around both Minneota, Minnesota, and Iceland, two places you loved specifically and with tender detail, two places that felt the force of your intuitive pen. When I went to my bookshelf of college texts and took from it The Music of Failure , I had memories of my own grumblings, of immature reluctance and bore
Paul Gruchow
Hello, Paul. I've been wanting to sit down and talk with you for some time now. I opened up Worlds Within a World last summer, and then Travels in Canoe Country, and then Journal of a Prairie Year and Grass Roots. When I began The Necessity of Empty Places I already knew I'd agree with you, even though I'd find myself continually surprised by what you had to say. So it goes with kindred souls. And I don't think you'd mind that I claim that. Other people and other places can tell your story better than me, so I'll let them. But I think it's important that I point a few other thinkers to your message. We are all so busy. It's good, before the leaves change this Autumn, to remind ourselves to slow down. "I accept, when I am in the woods, the idea that I do not completely command my life. To venture into a wilderness is to submit to the authority of nature. This may also seem a regression — adults command, children submit — but it is actually
Two Men I Never Met
When I was a sophomore in college, I took a course called Ethnic American Literature. Being that I was 1) an English major, 2) from an ethnically homogenous small town, and 3) desperate for "culture," I was incredulous when the reading list my professor passed out that first day had no Ralph Ellison, Leslie Marmon Silko, Maxine Hong Kingston, or Toni Morrison, but was instead full of all these, as he called them, "regional writers," a mix of poets and novelists and essayists from my home state that I'd never heard of and was sure had absolutely no relevance to my life. After all, I was going to teach, and how was I supposed to do that if I wasn't introduced to the writers who'd been anthologized? I went to another professor and complained (and, Minnesotan that I am, this practically killed me) until she loaded up my arms with every Toni Morrison book she owned. And walking back to my dorm room, clickity clack, holding these canonical texts close to my
Where We Dwell
"Remember, the only thing that matters is you're alive on earth." Mary Ruefle said this within the first moments of my most recent writing workshop, and amid all the insights both she and fellow advisor Larry Sutin offered in our time together, this aphorism has clung the most to my daily breath. "Remember," even though you're distracted by bills and busyness, by the laundry and lack of rice and the text-spam to delete, by the disappearance of summer heat, by the effort it takes to maintain trust, "the only thing that matters," even though you make lists that read pay electric, garbage out, change filter, fold clothes, buy rice, block spam , BELIEVE in your work, even though there is so much to do before Sunday, before the snow flies, before you get old, (the only thing) "is" (as in being / will you just be ) "you're alive on earth," a place you love, a place that loves you back, and an experience—life—tha
Green
I am storing up green like grain, opening my eyes wide like cellar doors. Winter is coming. Days without rain or sun or growth. I am filling my soul with this landscape of thick grasses and tall weeds and burgeoning forests as if it is a coffer, as if I am building an ever-green cathedral, as if one more glance will sanctify, render this view immovable and holy, immutable even by the whitest light.
"Lingering in Happiness"
After rain after many days without rain, it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees, and the dampness there, married now to gravity, falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground where it will disappear—but not, of course, vanish except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share, and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss; a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel; and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years, will feel themselves being touched. — Mary Oliver