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… 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… 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… 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… 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 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… 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 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…
Plate 1. Reeds Spring Tomato Cannery. Tomato Hills by Joshua Heston Solanum lycopersicum. It’s quite a name for the ever’day tomato. A member of the Nightshade family (along with sweet potatoes, peppers and, of course, the deadly nightshade), the tomato is native to the Americas. Some believed for along time that the plants and fruits…
Missouri Mules by Joshua Heston A long, hot dusty furrow. Summer sun beating down. Heat rippling the blue hills beyond. A bony old mule labors for a Missouri farmer, weathered lines of his face matching the ribs showing on the animal. Creak of leather, soft pad of foot and hoof. It is an image of…