“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
You Can Listen Here Seamus Heaney is dead. I carried Death of a Naturalist in my pack when we hitchhiked across Ireland in the hot summer of 1976. I was lucky enough to read his poems in his natural habitat — at night camped in a pasture outside Ballinasloe, the diamond stars scattered around the bowl of the sky; on Inisheer , my pack propped up by our tent, the sea blazing with sunlight a hundred yards away on […]
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You Can Listen Here At one a.m. she began crying. I slipped on a robe, opened the crate and carried her downstairs and outside into moonlight. The night was very quiet. She sat up, looked around, followed me, circled my shoes, rested her head upon the toe, came after me again when I called her name softly and finally peed. Upstairs again, I lay flat on the floor, my head on Wolfie’s bed and […]
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You Can Listen Here For nine or ten hours each week now I sit at tables and speak with children, and explain, draw, tell stories, ask questions and listen. I left the classroom 27 months ago, but I came back to hourly sessions with one student at a time. We talk to each other. These hours have reminded me again of what sustains the center of this give and take. Old Man Teaching A Boy How To […]
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You Can Listen Here Descending the ridge on an early, cool morning, the mist beginning to dissolve, we stop. A branch falls slowly from high up. Another crinkling noise. One grackle takes off from a tree, and then three or four more. We advance a few steps. Wolfie’s ears are peaked. Unmoving, he stares up and out into the deeper foliage and mist. As if in telepathic concert, they all begin to rise and […]
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