Was it the voice you feared, or its shadow?
Did you long for His touch or was suffering enough for you
to know He was there?
Do you resent my juvenile hungers?
Do you wish for me the freedom
Features
My father loved every kind of machinery,
relished bearings, splines, windings, and cogs,
loved the tolerances between moving parts
and the parts that moved the parts,
the many separate machines of machinery.
Loved the punch, the awl, the ratchet,
When the bomb goes off Leo is thinking of dogs. In particular: how he doesn’t like them.
It’s something about their eyes, which blink with an odd depth of understanding that appears almost human to him. A few years back, …
Read MoreNo other creature holds the same romance
in the minds of Icelanders as herring.
—Anita Elefson, historian, Herring Era Museum
I sit at a tiny coffeehouse nestled on the southern rocky coast of Iceland’s Snaefellsnes Peninsula, a finger of jagged …
Read MoreINTRODUCTION
Barry Lopez is one of the world’s foremost thinkers and writers about human beings and their place on this planet. Few writers have thought more deeply about that relationship or have written more powerfully and eloquently about it. The …
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Sometimes I feel like a goddess
with many hands . . . except human.
One hand is amber-gloved, dripping
with honey, and two constantly shoo
the flies. Two hands play “Miss
Mary Mack” while two pairs clap
to “Rockin’
My mother hanging sheets on a line
in ’47. The wind believes it won the war,
just like the rest of America,
and swirls her black hair in a manner
the photo likes to recall.
Her simple skirt and blouse
Because she lives alone and my hands reach
where hers can’t, she asks of me this favor.
It is narrow and soft, my mother’s back.
When I massage in small circles, my mother
circles her own mother, who
Wir sagen uns Dunkles
—Paul Celan
It began so quietly that no one could hear it.
How to begin a story that can never be told? For a long time, I started to tell the story by not telling …
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