To the Thawing Wind

"Come with rain, O loud Southwester! Bring the singer, bring the nester…" - Robert Frost, from A Boy's Will 1913

Weary of hauling maple, ash and oak to the woodstove by late winter, I pass beneath a fragile nest of moss and mud perched in the eaves of the …

"May something go always unharvested! May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left, So smelling their sweetness would be no theft."

Robert Frost, 1936

My Christmas tree plantation is now a faded field of dreams. Five hundred balsams, row upon …

The crew grew quiet as we approached the nest. They whispered and walked slowly, carefully scanning the tree tops overhead and behind them. At the snap of a dry twig underfoot, a goshawk leaped from the rim of its nest and screamed "Kak! Kak! Kak!" as it circled above the pines. I froze …