jmoening

There's only a few more days left to look out this window: We're moving. To a bigger (and hopefully better) place. With last autumn's loss of rooftop use and the subsequent loss of gardening space, I can't say I'll miss it. At all.

Birthday. Christmas. New Year's. And soon, Valentine's Day: Our anniversary. Everything is special, but everything runs together. I was as excited for ( Read more... )

Last night as I drove through the Poconos I saw what looked like a blue flare shot through the corner of the dark and starry night. It might have been a Near Earth Object known as Asteroid 2011 WP4.

I owe myself the next-closest thing to a wholehearted apology ( Read more... )

The three-day blow split in two
the jasmine whose fragrance
we enjoyed as one

Cutting dried flowers from
the dew-dropped field -- Shh!
Golden pheasant

Stop the car:
A family of deer nip silent meadow
-- My childhood home

We enjoyed a night full of free Guinness, Scotch and wine at Celtic Classic, then queued up for haggis, bridies and chips. (Those chips were killer.)

At risk of continually chronicalling our carefree consumption, let me say that we have dined richly upon grilled lobster tail, london broil, broccoli and sweet potatoes, Veuve Clicquot demi-sec champagne, Cardinal Zin and McCallan 12. As we stepped out onto the roof-porch and warmed ourselves by the burning branches of a modest fire, the first of the city's fireworks exploded overhead. We lit cigars, swigged from the bottle and put our arms around each other, laughing and toasting the past, present and future. It's one o'clock on January first, in the eleventh year of the millenium. We're enjoying champagne cocktails with mango juice and peach schnapps, crab cakes, homemade onion rings, batter-dipped mango and a mango-chipotle finishing sauce. Afterwards, there is homemade chocolate chip cookie crust cheesecake to be had.

Well, vacation is over. The sweet fruit of summer has been plucked and eaten, and now we're left with the stem and seeds of normal life. Fall is coming — then Christmas, snow and Valentine's Day. Days blow by like the pages of an open, wind-swept book.

Like a lonely monk
I hunch, scrubbing laundry
in an old spaghetti pot

When only birds and bugs will
brave the heat, I sit on the roof top
pulling weeds

Have you seen the sycamores' bare white
branches? — storm-stripped and reaching
up along the curve of the flooding stream