Browsing Category: Journal Pages

        Swallows fly in sweep before the tractor catching bugs in flush from engine’s sound.  Back and forth, they pass in swoop, angle of wings and v of their tails spread in arcs and glide; violet blue of topsides of their bodies, peach and cream flash when bellies show.  Mind is restless, won’t fix to […]

        I didn’t sleep well last night.  Maybe it was the iced tea at dinner, or cup of coffee after, or lights on in the kitchen through crack of door, too hot, or too cold, new pillow cover different from old’s feel.  Who knows?         Planting now, soft bounces and rhythm of tractor’s […]

        You can tell when a storm is near—even unseen in sky.  Temperature change, by body shivers in constant of tractor’s cab.  I turn the heater on, 86 degrees outside—winter-breeze moment before’s 92.           There are shadows to the southwest, haze of not-formed cloud.  From this, cloud becomes.  There shadow streaks beneath, contrails of rain’s […]

        I plant the last of our first-crop fields, our only west of town.  It is different country, as near as it is to the rest, and I feel an adventure and sense of levity as I drive into rolling hills of open land.  Black-eyed Susan’s and day lilies line the ditches of the narrow, […]

        They are just a few notes, same chords all play—but they are different from certain hands and certain souls, and you feel it right away.  It’s something I can’t do, no matter how I’ve tried.  Such is not my medium for affecting and touching souls, but when I hear it, I know it’s magic […]

        I replant the field.  Most-ideal of a non-ideal situation—it didn’t work.  Looking over field post-emergence, you can see the slopes and seeps and holds where water keeps—all of them were drowned, blank spots in stand of corn.           July, I plant beans.  Money for the nitrogen is lost; but decomposition of the ground […]

        Wide open pasture, I keep to the path worn by habited hooves.  It is easier, no grass or forage to catch and drag feet through; bare, solid ground, heading straight to destination I know—the drinker I turned off to encourage cattle to corral where I’ve worked them; treating and cleaning eyes because they […]

               There is never enough time for everything, even when time is all you have; so make time for what you can.  Prioritize as you see.                There’s much to do, but first I breathe.  I look, assess—how to be most efficient—and then I waste time.                 I waste time in the garden, as some […]

June 29, 2025:                We are still behind in the fields.  I worked late.  I will start early, but before I do, missing Mass, I want to read what it is that will be spoken in Mass I miss.                 It is a confusing time in the Church.  I don’t mean that in some soul-searching, […]

        I stop at Walmart on return from the field.  I buy fish and laundry detergent.  We are out of both.           Home, I sit on the porch as a storm rolls in: flashes of lightning and thunder to north where I know tractor and planter rest, dead and idle in the field.  I’m […]