Eliza Daley ~ Wordcraft & Musing on Home & Hope
Participatory Democracy Today is Town Meeting day in Vermont. For the uninitiated, this is the day when Vermonters pack themselves into school gyms and various meeting halls to vote on town governance for the upcoming year. Officials are elected. Laws are debated and passed. Budgets are assigned. If there are complaints or disturbances, these are… Continue reading The Daily: 7 March 2023
It’s burning again. Look out across this river valley at the old volcano warts and there doesn’t seem to be enough to keep a churro fed, never mind an inferno. What’s it eating when there’s nothing but grit and gravel and black rock? I don’t go over that way enough to puzzle out that riddle.… Continue reading Desert Pyre: Winifred Mumbles
A Full Moon Tale for the Strawberry Moon There’s a layer of ash visible high in the walls of the arroyo. It lenses in and out, thickening and thinning, breaking into eerie grey smiles in the upper bank face. It is not old. Bright plastic riddles the layers underneath this ash like malignant confetti and… Continue reading Arroyo Strawberries: Winifred Mumbles
It’s my week to tend to the box people. Don’t know why I signed up for a whole week in January. The Wolf Moon is the hardest time of year. But they were so grateful down in the valley when I did that I didn’t have the heart to change it. So now… forty-six years… Continue reading Box People: Winifred Mumbles
It’s my birthday. Think I might be seventy-eight. Hard to keep track of things like that. There was that kerfuffle over calendars, some folks demanding a clean slate. As if the year number could erase history. As if anything could clean up this mess. But if it makes them feel better, it also doesn’t hurt… Continue reading Apple Cake: Winifred Mumbles
Nine thousand years. Maybe ten. Maybe fifteen. Five hundred generations. Of humans that is. Nine thousand generations of this. Nine thousand years of fields green with three sisters. The gold of tassels, rust of pods, sun orange and berry red of squash. I feel the breath of my ancestors in these gardens, stirring leaves and… Continue reading 9000 Years (Winifred Mumbles)
(Winifred Mumbles) They say there were one million pates under that sunset once upon a time. I imagine only once. Because I can’t imagine that impossible clot of humans happening twice. They littered the valley with their aspirations. Plastic. Fading. Tired even in youth. I can see the echoes under the rainbow sky. Foundations poured… Continue reading Ozymandias and the Dreamers
Churros are restive out there in the darkness. Should probably be concerned. Takes a lot to worry an animal with four horns. Shearing makes them irritable, but not sleepless. Something different out there bothering them. New note to the night air. What is it? Got this old saying tumbling around in my old head. Something… Continue reading Nothing But Blue Skies (Winifred Mumbles)
Well, this is unexpected. Here I thought I’d planted filet beans. Avast, ye mildewed squash! Prepare to be boarded! Been over a century. New round of seeds every year for more the one hundred generations. And these changelings still crop up. They used to say plastic was the most enduring ill from those people. And… Continue reading Beans (Winifred Mumbles)
i remember. the smell of water on dust. the sound of birdsong in the soft morning light. the chiaroscuro texture of resin beads on juniper needles. i remember walking. walking. walking. mama at my side. i remember heat. and death. i remember the lost. i remember coming to this place. it’s been seven decades by… Continue reading Memory (Winifred Mumbles)
By My Solitary Hearth 