A few lines from a new work in process …

By the way, there is a pitcher on top of the white hutch, where she keeps her dishes. The ones she uses for holidays, for when her sister comes. The pitcher was her mother’s and her grandmother brought it from Ireland wrapped in cheesecloth and stuffed with soft rags, among the quilts in a leathern trunk. She lives in a house too small for memories, so this is all she kept of them. Stoneware pale as milk, and chipped a little at its base.

If you stand at the edge of the field behind her house, at dawn of any fall or winter day, you’ll see the world through leaded glass. The Diablo Range with all that light behind it shifts and weaves. The mountains try to disappear; they hesitate to wake and stand for this. But she is up and moves about the house, forgetting things.

She intends to forget them all, and wait for death as someone might wait for a bus. Patiently, with no concern for time of day, but with an eye on the long road.