Bird
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Many poets speak of the challenge of being a poet, but few have captured the sense of being out of place and misunderstood like Richard Wilbur in his translation of Charles Baudelaire’s stunning poem from “The Flowers of Evil.” My wife shared it with me tonight, having heard it herself for the first time on
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There’s something that draws me to hawks. And yet, this morning a hawk was drawn to our side porch! Admittedly, I know exactly why the hawk chose to hang out on the corner post overlooking my neighbor’s lawn: baby rabbits. We’d been watching their furtive movements around the rhododendron bush from the dining room table
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I have been living, savoring the moments of married children home for weddings, holiday celebrations, late night games and talks, traveling and staying put, eating, loving, caring for the sick, pushing off the extraneous, the many emails pilling up like leaves in my inbox, and fronting “only the essential facts of life,” as Thoreau so
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Admittedly, I should have posted this yesterday to allow you all the time to Sabbath either on Saturday or Sunday with this Wendell Berry wafer. But as these days are full with life and activity, this post had to wait until now. And yet, the timelessness of Berry’s wisdom about “how to be alive” ever
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Last Sunday, I started mulling over the phrase “marionette me.” I’ve always been impressed by the master marionettests who can bring puppets to life through the subtle, intentional movement of strings, operating unseen. I guess I’ve always appreciated puppets. I was raised on Sesame Street and, more importantly, The Muppet Show. I used to love
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A little over a week ago, a dead branch I was cutting knocked me off my extension ladder, causing me to fall seventeen feet to the lawn below. By the grace of God, I broke nothing. Once I got my breath back, I reset the ladder, climbed back up, and finished the cut. I even

