The young birch is the odd man in the patch of pines we’ve planted—slender, somewhat delicate, with heart-shaped leaves that reflect light as they twirl. I like to watch the young birch when the sun is low in the sky. The thin trunks reach up. The tilting leaves drink in the gold light, then disappear…
“You have to come see this,” John said. He stood at the open sliding door to the deck, looking up. “All the colors bright as can be.” The sky was wild, blue and orange, with a beautiful eerie light that felt significant. The rainbow shot through it all as if it belonged there, even lighting…
I was sitting at home not feeling well, so John brought me a wonderful, strange bouquet – a couple tiger lilies, three pink carnations, two small sunflowers, a dozen yellow daisies, and five miniature orange roses. In my woozy state, I watched the colors whirl together, and I remembered science class in some elementary grade…
The slim forest feels like my link to the earth. Sometimes I stand on a stump and pretend I’m Emerson, a little teary-eyed. I stretch my arms out, lift my chin, close my eyes and imagine I am a transparent eyeball through which the force and knowledge of the universe flow unchanged. I am part…
John got me two Vasarely paperweights for Christmas, and I spend too much time watching them. Occasionally, I take one in each hand and fly them through the air as I zoom around the room. There’s no way to stop them, even when they’re sitting on the worktable in front of me. They’re not alive,…
After a good rain, the little falls at Yuko En will splash right up on you if you get down close. Closer, and you’re sliding toward the blue and gold light, the rising mist, the planes of crystal glare. From the edge of the sidewall your feet hit the falling water, the force pushing against…
There’s an apple on the table, and papers, and as I’m trying to work I notice that the box of Kleenex is beautiful. The proportions, height to width. The crispness of the edges, the swirl of colors, the strength of the thin, airy tissue reaching up. I notice how the light gathers and fades, soft…
Names of roads around here are evocative: Long Lick, Stamping Ground, Sulphur Wells, East Honaker, J.B. Lear, Burton, Glass, Lloyd, Skinnersburg, Josephine, Indian Creek, Pokeberry. I imagine a story in each of the names, and as I cruise along one and another road a little country world takes shape, and the stories grow day by…
The ducks are of two minds. I’m a bother, but I am something to yell at. Some jump to the ice. At dusk, the ducks might as well be ice. Winter pastels fade into brilliant blues and reds that spread from the horizon across the pond, the field, the day. “Those ducks . . ….
Backroads of Indiana through New Albany to I-64 through Louisville and on at dusk toward home, the sunset burning on the limestone and gray-green brush—as passenger, I can follow the light anywhere, would follow it . . . westward, somewhere, up into the trees. The road pulls on nights like this, and I let it…
G Bebs / Photographs 