Two goats
Ten hens
Nine garden beds
Four apple trees
A sloping hay field
A tumbledown stone wall
A swamp
The woods behind the house, and the thrush that sang in them
The imprint of fawn hooves on the driveway in mud season
The squeaky-door song of the phoebes at dawn
The frogs in the frog pond
The black bear at the bird feeder
The ermine in the garage
The milking pail, the cheese press
The me who believed she could keep it all going.
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| (photo by Alison Cobb) |
I tried to sing this to 12 Days of Christmas. It didn't work.
ReplyDeleteThe list is quite amazing - productivity and wild nature, frogs, bears, fawns, and an ermine! (Does that make you Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine? I actually saw it in Krakow, and will never think of it without now thinking of you.)
But I felt so sad at the last sentence. You know you kept it all going for as long as you could or should. For that, you should be very proud.
I love that painting too. "My" ermine seemed a lot smaller than the Da Vinci one, and a pure, bright white. And it would NEVER have allowed me to pick it up.
DeleteYou have so many of these things in your memory, and when you write them, you have them forever. I am quite enjoying them through your memory. With no energy, the last thing I need is to be responsible for critters: one chinchilla is just about more than I can handle, and she sleeps most of the time!
ReplyDeleteThinking of you with the Catalan news.
A chinchilla! She must be good company...
DeleteAnd I miss you. And I miss the time I had to read blogs. Where have I been?
ReplyDeleteOn Facebook, with the rest of us?
ReplyDelete