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BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE DAY BEFORE. A lemon sky gathers, clouds a distant tangerine smudge where the sun is setting on the far western horizon, somewhere over Oklahoma it seems, and the ribbon road is again endless, east versus west, time over and again. The forest ridges tumble away on all sides, faceless, nameless to…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… STORYBOOK DIRT. The smell of the leaves is strong in the November dusk, strong and acidic and tannic and luminous, the smell of the forest’s death and rebirth, of the garden and autumn all at once. The sun slipped beyond the west seemingly only moments ago and now all is but dark.…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… FOREST OR FIRE. Hot afternoons and cold nights and the Ozarks’ oak forest blossomed in crimson, orange, and brilliant yellow. Fall has finally fallen, too late for Halloween, but right on cue. I drive home in awe, even as early dusk covers the hills in a gauzy purple blanket. At some point…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… SEASON’S ENDS. One week ago, I was told to resign as Sunday School director, music leader, and deacon, of Smyrna Baptist Church by my fellow deacons after 16 years of Smyrna being my church home. The accusation (which was news to me) was occultism, heresy, and witchcraft. Appropriate for the Halloween season,…

Artwork by Clint Loveland, February 25, 2017. BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… STORIES TO TELL. Leaning back in my chair at Vintage Paris Coffee, I close my eyes, listening to the stories being spun and woven by the small group of dedicated writers around me. There is an oaky bitterness in the air, but only because I…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… RULES OF TRAVEL. Dusk, gray and lavender in the dark, settles over the old neighborhood. At the top of the stairs, the shadows lengthen, then sharpen, then fade. Sister and brother stand on the landing talking. “I think you’ll like this album. I wouldn’t have thought I’d like it. It’s country music,…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… DOG, HEARTH, MAGIC. The rain beats down outside, surprisingly cold, especially after so long a hot, dry summer. The warnings on my phone turn ominous: flash flood alert. Floods are sudden on a limestone plateau. No thick layer of clay here to absorb all that run-off. For the first time in what…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… INK, STONE, MAGIC. “Lithography began in the late 17th century,” my professor is saying while writing the words “Bavaria,” and “limestone” on the white board. “‘Lithos’” means ‘stone’ in Greek.” Outside, the afternoon sun is bright, air dry in the September light. I am in Graphic Arts 110, sitting in a classroom…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… LEAF & SHADOW. Late summer afternoons seem hotter, somehow, after we have been teased with the scent of fall. Autumn has become something of a designer season, all decked out with pumpkin farm experiences and flannels and big floppy hats ready-made for social media posing. When I was much younger, it seems,…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… WILD RABBITS WATCHING. The runaway mine train roars over closely cut grass, flying between stands of elm and cottonwood. It is strange to be riding a roller coaster that hugs the earth. Riding so close to the grass makes the speed seem faster. The dandelions, the mullein and the wild hawthorn blur…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… OAK & STONE. High on the mountain ridge, last light of the evening sun shines through the red sumac leaves beneath the cedar and oak. Another long day, another hot summer, another farmers market coming to quiet close. Beyond, the sound of traffic, of slamming car door, of quiet chatter from the…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… RIVERS AND LIGHT. The shadows of leaves dance on my living room wall, end of another day, end of another hot summer day. Science tells us, obviously, the earth’s rotation changes our perspective on the sun, just another star in just another galaxy of stars. Just the same, my sun sets, marking…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT.. CARNIVAL SOUL. The sunset streaks with orange and purple and the wind is blowing from the Southeast, ragged and fitful and soft to the touch. The wind smells of the South, all hints of loblolly pine and eternal sea and summer memory, of summers long ago, and of forbidden Southern rock beneath…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… RAIN, SUN, SWEAT. The heat waned marginally as the sun slowed to the horizon. Another day almost done, another mile, another thought, another schedule. Slowly, the crazy and swirling thoughts and voices past and present began to fade. The late afternoon sun might have dropped the temperature, but not the humidity. End…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BARN POEMS. I was about eight years old, wearing overalls, and climbing over the big horse gate in the barn. There were two big horse gates in our little barn, a ladder to the haymow made of mismatched wood, and a little plastic duck with big blue eyes — a duck covered…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… SUNSET DEATH. I was up early in the light rain, walking the dogs on the forest trail before getting to my summer work. There had been no rain on the radar or forecast but the showers came down anyway, even as an early sun peeked through the bright grays of the East.…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… SKY CHANGE. I took off running after the July thunderstorm, running to the top of the south hill where the big hawthorn grew, running past the grapevines and the plum thicket and the day lilies wet with evening rain.The sky was clearing and I knew, somehow, I should be high up on…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… DISCIPLINE & HOPE BENEATH THE SUMMER SUN. The 6:30 Saturday morning alarm sounds and I let it repeat three times before turning it off. In retrospect, choosing a song — and an Enya song at that — may not have been the best idea. The Irish artist’s Forge of Angels keeps lulling…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE MEMORY CHICKENS. “Your house is like going to grandma’s in the ’90s,” my friend is saying and I’m not sure if I should be amused or insulted. I tend to curate friends who speak their mind. And the eclectic collection of porcelain chickens in the kitchen stare down in an affirming…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE LONG LAST DAY. The orange sun slips behind the western mountain ridges. Summer solstice ends, even as the evening news begins its frantic reporting of the Iran bombings by US stealth bombers flying from Whiteman Air Force Base near Knob Noster, Missouri. Historic times for sure. War perhaps averted by war.…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… AMERICAN FRONTIERS. The caravel’s sails billowed and orchestral music swelled. I was glued to the TV that early summer of 1992, watching a PBS documentary on Columbus and the New World. Shot on location in the Caribbean as well as Spain, the documentary included panoramic scenes of warm Floridian skies, the dark…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE WARRIOR POETS. The sun was hot that late afternoon and bits and pieces of the moment still float somewhere in my memory. We were parked out back behind the old high school — now the junior high, a red brick monstrosity augmented by appropriately boring brick cubes added to expand learning…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE SPIDER AND THE BOAT. The great garden spider, all bright yellow and stark black, was still and waiting on her weaving web there amid blooming iris and peonies and vivid purple clematis. The garden was in the front yard, stretching across nearly the length of the house and was bookended by…

THINKING’ ABOUT… THE MINSTREL OAKS. The shadow of the afternoon sun’s heat remained, covering the deep greens of the tightly mown fairgrounds, covering the land and sky itself and making the forest beyond the gravel road wave slightly, a shimmer as though of another time and place. Beyond the line of dark forest, the sun…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… MOUNTAIN MAGIC. I clench the Arkansas diamond in my small palm, imagining in my five-year-old mind that the clear quartz crystal is a real diamond and, more than that, that the cheap quartz has real magic. I had picked the crystal out of a rock box in a dimly lit mom-and-pop curio…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE ZOMBIE STORY HOUSE. The young maple leaves play a sweeping tapestry across the white limestone bricks, big, thick, crystal limestone the color of a tawny lion in a faraway land. The house was a good house, is a good house, but no one lives here, not anymore. The windows are dark…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BRICKS IN TIME. I’m doing my best to stay awake, leaning back in the overstuffed couch as the clock ticks toward midnight. I’m catching up on my favorite science fiction series, a series now only a mere 30 years old. On the screen, the captain is, uncharacteristically, scrubbing clams, leaning back against…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… WORDS, ARTS, CRAFTS & TOMATOES. “It always comes back to the words,” I type on my comfortable old laptop this balmy late-April afternoon as the dogs drape themselves over the furniture, dozing, awaiting their walk. The StateoftheOzarks season hasn’t opened, not quite. But the clock is ticking. Five days. The StateoftheOzarks (formerly…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… TELEVISIONS FOREVER. The florescent light was bright in the old store, all cheap wood paneling and thin green carpet. The Friday evening was chilly and damp and I, following my parents, tread lightly, threading my way past aging television sets in various stages of disrepair. The shopkeeper was talking about TVs, naturally,…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… A CUP OF PEACH TEA. Last week’s floods and storms and my chest cold are now memory, history washing away. Rest has been a healing boon recently, rest being something I say little about. First, much of my schedule doesn’t allow such things. Second, if I do talk about resting, I am…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE SHIRT ON THE SINK. I stumble to the bathroom and pick up my olive green “Freedom Is Not Free” t-shirt from the sink where it has been lying crumpled for the past three days. The shirt is wrinkled but that doesn’t matter. The dogs certainly won’t care as I take them…

BEEN THINKING ABOUT… THE PEAR TREE. The pear tree in the yard has leafed, shade dappled beneath an increasingly hot sun. Mist rose in the holler last night, turning the sunset red. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning. The grass beneath the pear is already thick and raucous, overgrown where the lawn had once…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… COLD SPRING DAYS. Cold spring days are special things. Too soon the air will be hot and ragged as summertime seems to arrive earlier each year and so I remain thankful for the chill of early spring. There is subtle beauty in the overcast, the clouds changing, gray and severe, the hanging-on…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE DIVINE HAG. The Ozarks are beautiful in springtime, but springtime is not yet here. I stand atop my own meadow mountain, wind gusts hitting something like 50 miles an hour, and squint into the gale, into the dust, briefly losing my footing and catching myself from falling as the wind intensifies.…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE BITTER MARCH WIND. The bitter March wind stirs the red oak leaves on the hillside, leaf litter heavy in the late afternoon. The sky has cleared, temperature dropping quickly. Thankfully, the cab of my F-150 is warm as I navigate the going-home traffic. I turn the wheel north, north through the…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… UNDERWORLD GAINS. It’s late. I’m tired. I’m hungry. At least the gym is playing Hozier on the speakers. I shrug. It is the end of the month, the last chance for any personal records in February. I’m already sore. The six plates of iron loaded on the bar are not going anywhere.…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE TOWN WITH MANY DOORS. The name of the town is not important. There are too many, too many small towns, too many names gone, too many memories lost in the cold waters of time. The fact that it was once my town is not important either, only that those cold, lost…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… ROSES IN A DARK ROOM. A dark bedroom, a single light. The lamp was a strange thing, heavily weighted, long, spindly neck, rough black charcoal-like texture of hood and base, the lamp of a mid-century engineer with a black briefcase and shoes buffed until persistently reflective. But engineering was a world away,…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… CAKE, ICE, FOG. It was so foggy the black night I drove home across bleak Illinois prairies and into dark Illinois woods. The thick fog obscured red tail lights, white snow-packed ice, even stop signs. West central Illinois is a different sort of place, a place where the folklore of a lost…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… MOLLY KATHLEEN. The dogs in the barn barked that bright morning as I was sitting at the dining room table, open notebook before me, scholastic workbooks stacked to my right. My mom threw dishtowel over shoulder and walked to the front room windows, frowning. Someone was walking up the driveway. I was…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BLACK PHILLIP. In the bleak conclusion of Robert Eggers’ film The Witch, the big black billy goat fatally gores the ever-angry Puritan father. The goat then transforms into the devil, seducing teenage daughter Thomasin and leading her into the forest to become a witch. I don’t feel bad about spoiling the ending.…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… OUR VERY OWN OZARK HOWLER The phone rang and I answered, made curious by the California area code. “Is this Joshua with StateotheOzarks?” Yes, it is. “Are you familiar with Ozarks lore? Yes, I am. “Can you get us in touch with someone who has seen the Ozark Howler?” Wait, what? It…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… JUST A BUNCH OF BULLY GOATS. The sun was warm that spring day in the barn yard and I was tending some 20 goats of all sizes, ages and temperaments. I loved the barn. I loved the goats and would much rather be out in the barn wallowing around with whatever baby…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT…. GOING DOWN TO EGYPT. The dark-haired boy is bent over blank white paper, black-and-red flannel obscuring a thin and insecure frame. His desk is dark brown, dark brown like his eyes, eyes like his father’s. The desk is handmade by his grandpa, pine impossible to scratch beneath layers of resin laminate. This…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… CEDAR GLOOM PUPPIES. My puppies are running, circling, wrestling in this overcast of Christmas Day, bounding through grasses brown and fledgling green. Christmas Day is a demarcation of sorts, singular handful of days over our lives, days to remember through the long years. Has this Christmas Day been better? Has it been…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BIG TRUCKS AND FARMERS ALL. Solstice sunset, longest, darkest night of the year, and the big rigs on the big road are lit like Christmas trees in the cold. Orange and red and yellow lights frame big rectangles of American freight racing at 80 miles per hour, mile after long Missouri mile,…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE ONLY PLACE LEFT. I remember how cold the air was in the lonely hospital garden that Saturday evening in late November. Winter arrives early on the central Iowa plains and the wind played in that empty, man-made canyon, a hollow box of mounded earth and agreeably curved pathways. Over here, a…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… SCARY GHOST STORIES. I climbed into my truck at nightfall, trusty Basset joining on the console. Key in ignition, watchful reverse into the alley. Bright crescent moon in the Southwest peeked through poplar branches. Truck tires on gravel, then edge-of-town asphalt. Yellow street lamps light the way, one block, two blocks… At…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE DARK MOON QUIET. The cold night wind is in the elm branches, making a faint whistling sound. From somewhere nearer the creek comes the light scratching of talons on branch. Starlight is twinkling, save for patches of black, denoting clouds moving in. The weather is changing, getting colder. There is white…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… RED, ORANGE, BLACK. Night fell out on the big road, a thousand trucks lit like Christmas trees, 80 miles-per-hour stars in the sudden dusk, stars streaming west, following the contours of the land, west wind to a dying sun. This Osage land is where upland plateau — all rocks and hollers and…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… BROKEN SKY PROMISES. The lily pond was quiet, save for dark bubbling waters. The piped sounds of classical music had faded, the people mostly gone home. A tree frog peeped from beneath jungly hosta leaves. This strange Eden carved from cornfields and beneath the prairie sky fell into shadow, casualty of another…

BEEN THINKIN’ ABOUT… THE SENTINEL OAKS’ PROMISE. I ran down the path, bare feet flying on our forest floor. I liked to run the paths we had made, paths mostly free of gooseberry thorns. Still, I had to be careful. When you grow up going bare foot spring, summer and most of autumn, you learn…