I was about 10 years old,

and my birthday wish

was to ride in the back seat of my father’s car

as he drove on a rainy night

so I could watch the rain

falling on the glass.

In my 20s, I was sailing out in the ocean

several miles from shore,

when a steady breeze

whipped up quickly into a gust of rain.

Before us appeared a cycling, spiraling waterspout

that disappeared in the rain as quickly as it had appeared.

Living in San Francisco in my 30s,

I felt misty rain chill my skin to the bone much of the year.

Each gray day brought the yellow line of the highway

Into rhythmic moments of light-filled saturation.

And, the patterned clothing of Chinatown warmed my soul,

and sent my heart dancing along the sidewalks.

In my 40s,

I would drive across the state for my job,

working with artists in all weather, in all months.

One night, in the rain, on a mountain road, my headlights went out.

I think to sleep in the car and continue the trip in daylight.

The radio tells me that two men have escaped a prison in this area.

How smart is this going to be?

In my 50s, I pull weeds after a storm.

The rain has loosened the ground’s hold on the roots.

An obsession of mine is to pull grass growing in the gravel of the driveway

and these invaders appearing in beds of iris.

Thick worms 5-6 inches long have been breeding in the soil beneath the gravel

and writhe around as they are disturbed by my work.

In my 60s ,

I study Japanese woodblock prints of rain.

Sheets of rain fall against people in the rice fields.

Parallel lines white against gray strike houses and gardens.

Figures lean into its force and move with haste,

seeking safety in a distant warm light.

In my 70s,

I curl up in bed with a good book,

listening to the rain pound on our metal roof.

It is comforting to be warm and free,

mixing words and sounds,

not needing to be anywhere else.

My mother was dying. Or so we thought. With hospice on call, she still lived with relative independence in a retirement community. She and my father moved in when she was still in her 60s, he in his 70s, just as Parkinson’s made it difficult for him to walk. Twenty years of new friends and dining hall meals and deaths.

Armed with a disposable underwater camera, I began swimming backstroke in the ocean off the coast of Pawley’s Island, SC. At first, I was tossed by waves and attempted to snap the sky from under the sea’s churning. Murky underwater shades of green entangled with my legs yielded mysterious movement, moody moments, but not the exuberance I feel while swimming. Then it happened. I captured the sea bursting from kicks, joyous beads of water in the air above the sea. A reduction woodcut was the result.

May 2022

Mariupol

I watch the news in horror.

How can this be happening in 2022?

What amount of greed,

Or power or land,

Can be worth this destruction?

This pain, these deaths.

These ear-piercing sounds.

The freezing cold.

The hunger. The grief.

The beautiful lives damaged and lost.

Others, remaining in place,

Inventive and ingenious,

Passion-filled and creative.

They make apps,

Weave camouflage screens,

Clean away rubble, offer a helping hand,

Assist the effort with skills newfound.

They are planning to survive,

Preparing to rebuild.

Sucking in the sunlight.

A man with four cars

Drives west with his family.

He leaves three cars behind.

Keys in the ignition.

Positioned around the city.

Awaiting others to slip inside.

And escape to safety.

Generosity and bravery.

Facing hatred and evil.

For a week in the 2021 pandemic winter, I paid to work in Penland’s print studio. I had this glorious, beautifully lit, open space to myself. I had been photographing rain and sleet, water on windshields, puddles, water splashing in pools. So I carved wood blocks and began to print, layering one block upon another, attempting to convey the movement of water, frozen in time. I laid out the production of my week and felt intensely proud.

I wrote this for you, the story that caused you to weep.

The baby rabbit waited in the drive, perfectly still, looking directly at you.

You approached slowly. Its eyes focused on you. It didn't move.

You reached the side not facing you and discovered a gaping injury.

A hole. Pure pain. In both.

Returning with water and carrots, you found the creature gone.

But where? How long would she live?

I was away, looking at an owl on the deck of a friend's cottage.

As you talked, I saw no birds. No bird droppings.

The owl just going what owls do, I thought.

Later, we saw your tender one, marked still but healing.

The owl did not have her for dinner. She was eating the grass.

On February 9, with COVID shots in our arms, Millie Ravenel and I ventured by ferry to Cumberland Island, a sea island bordering Florida and Georgia, a United States National Seashore, home to protected live oaks that dip and curl in and out of the earth, to armadillos whose armor cries stillness as its tail swings willfully through the underbrush.

The temperature on December 24 registered between 10-20 degrees F outside with wind, ice and snow falling. On December 25 and 26, the temperatures didn’t rise much so our landscape remained white. By December 27 the sun arrived and the temperature rose to 42 degrees. It felt balmy.

All in all, the pandemic has caused me to look at time differently. Since March, my trips have all been cancelled, and yet I seem to lack time. It disappears. It languishes. My old concept of time challenges me to do something with each day, yet now I ask if the challenge is to accept doing nothing.

These last 9 months have given many of us time to think, to nest and hibernate, to take care of the others around us, and to be creative in our own ways.

The wind is howling as I wake today, and leaves fly through the air. Without my glasses, the leaves resemble birds, but then I see a dozen crows, twice their size, gathering in an evergreen tree.

My friend Ennis Carter has created a woodcut image of a phoenix-rising and is distributing the prints to stimulate discussions on freedom. She refers to her project as prayers. I have been making monoprints that I think of as letters to God.

After 16 years we are having the outside of our house repainted. The painter, who wanted to access the upper dormer roof from a window in our closet, asked, “Are all of these your clothes?” No judgement, no laughter or dismay, just a serious, breezy question. I told him the closet was a museum of my past….

The farm that abuts our neighborhood is many acres of pastureland and a forest of old oaks. Along a winding gravel road, we pass coyote scat and freshly blooming thistles. In years past, we would find cows on the farm. They would look at us and then run from one side of the road to the other when we approached…