It’s been a bumpy year here in the hollow, but we’ve made it past the solstice into the lengthening of days and the hopeful winter sky. Jupiter continues to make his stately progress each evening heralding Orion the hunter with his spangled three buckled belt, stalking east to west above our tree-tipped teacup horizon. Venus is in her evening star phase, pulling down the waxing moon as it sets.
When I look at the stars and planets and listen to the creek, I feel connected to all who’ve come before me here, who stood in the same place, looking at the same sky, hearing the same flow of water – Indians, foxes, Scotch-Irish settlers, herons, hardscrabble farmers whose old pig pens molder in the woods along with the piles of rocks they gleaned from their tilled fields – the farmer’s wife (it must have been a woman) who planted the poppies and old daffodils by the drive. I think of her when I plant long-lived things.
I hope what we leave here may comfort someone years from now.
Rocks gleaned from hillside hold creek bank.