Lunatic

Sometimes I remind myself of the Don Quixote of our yard.  He’s a lunatic robin doing valiant battle through this long and glorious spring.  I can’t believe he hasn’t killed himself yet.  When morning is only a soft charcoal suggestion, he begins flying...

Mercy (an excerpt from a novel-in-progress)

I hope the deer was the last thing Cory saw, not the pickup truck careening toward him, and I hope his eyes were wide and soft with pleasure.  We’re here to teach our children and grandchildren, I know that.  But sometimes we see things through their eyes and...

On Hunting and Metaphor

  IN SEASON I need bullets, he said, only one left in the chamber, and headed toward the house when by chance I spotted it in the back field, near the woods that drop down to Rush Run, the creek like a vein through our farm, and shouted to him, though a shadow...

The Mystery of Metaphor

                        “To a poet nothing can be lost.”  Samuel Johnson Something happened a few days ago that got me thinking about depicting emotion when I write, and how often I find my way to it through metaphor.  Winter had reasserted itself, so Hannah’s forest...