May 31 In just a few weeks this has happened. Lush. The beautiful jack-in-the-pulpit: before this spring I had only ever seen one or two of these, in the woods of Ontario. The flower grows beneath the leaves, which look like large trillium leaves, three to a stem. ***** Mumma: “Doesn’t it seem to you…

 May 29 The cows came mooing and mooing up our hill to spend a few weeks here. The farmer rotates the herd around several properties during the summer. Later they will be taken over to Rain and Tal’s farm. This morning they are gathered by the old barn. One is nibbling on the wise witch….

May 26 Sometime in the night Fig called to me and I gathered him up and took him to bed with me. He died while I slept with him cuddled against my chest.  We spent yesterday sitting on the porch watching the clouds and the birds. It was a good day. Fig lay on the…

 May 25 Fig is going to die soon. He weighs less than half what he weighed in September. He has diabetes, which means he cannot, without insulin shots (which he isn’t getting), keep enough sugar in his bloodstream to keep his body alive. He has a heart malfunction called a murmur which means he can’t…

 May 22 The green forest. More violets – these are different, taller and with stems from which the leaves branch, rather than forming a crown from the root. White and yellow, although I think they are the same plant.       ***** The long weekend: a weekend of Canadian rituals, with gardening first up: traditionally,…

May 16 The Wise Witch, blossoms in her hair.  There is more green every day. The distant hills show green now. I am sitting on the porch, warm enough in shirtsleeves.The raven is circling the ridge and croaking. There is a pair of crows too, nesting nearby. The song sparrow is nesting here, maybe two…

 May 9 This is my mother with my first daughter, Tamar. She died when Tamar was seven, before Rain was born. I wrote this poem several years later as I began to see who my mother was, not as a mother but as a woman unto herself.  sunsets at little pike partly she was alone…

may 8 where did my spirits go those three days when the rain closed in and shrouded grey the vermont hills the green mountains bereft of certainty I was cold and though the wind blew soft it did not soothe the sun is shining now tree swallows newly arrived trapeze maniacally over the meadow one…

 May 3 The sun was shining yesterday and the trout lilies, who slept closed up through two days of rain and chill, opened and showed their faces once again. More and more are flowering among the trees on the ridge.  Here is a bellwort, my first good look at the flower. More tiny white violets…