Sylvia Shawcross With the end of winter comes a death rattle deep from the throat of the cold. It has sputtered snow in between the rain and left the spring grasses white wet waiting. We dreamed and prayed for the warmth but it still does not want to stay. It flirts with us then disappears …
Sylvia Shawcross There was a wild wind and a wicked sky and a cold cold day. North of here the power went out for a long long time and people grumbled but were secretly grateful for an excuse to do nothing. And then it was back to warm weather expecting rain. But it was a …
Sylvia Shawcross It is cold again at night and the raccoons that reach their little hands up to the bowl of food are not there under the porch light again. When it was warmer they stirred in sleepy hunger to feed but now they are in their dark dens. With the recent snow now draped …
Sylvia Shawcross Out there the freezing rain settles crystals on the high snow and in the trees and dens the animals are warm and dreaming. Inside the people in their homes hope to heavens they don’t have to go out in “that” because life is hard enough without sliding and slipping and skating on treacherous …
Sylvia Shawcross It was late in the game when I realized I’d forgotten to look at the latest meteor shower. It is something I always like to do to remind myself of how small and insignificant we humans are in the scheme of things… or maybe that’s just me… Anyway, out I went to see …
Sylvia Shawcross When you grow older it is almost arduous trying to remember what once was. I was trying to remember when it all happened—when did the world I understand disappear? What were the small things that should have clued me in more to expect what we’re in now? One day I was watching a …
Sylvia Shawcross “Oh you better watch out. You better not cry. You better not pout. I’m telling you why—Santa Klaus is coming to town.” John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie 1934 Sometimes I feel like a commoner in an uncommon world. Actually, if I think about it, that is pretty much who I am. I …
Sylvia Shawcross Now, being as he was, he could have been surviving anywhere, in his way, but now he was living in a Harm Reduction facility in central Canada on the outskirts of a loud, distracted city where there was never really any time to stop and know a person. Unless you knew a life …
Sylvia Shawcross We didn’t go here before did we? Come with me now. It’s a sunny spring day. You could wear a sweater if you like which you might take off and wrap around your waist later, after the hike up the sloping hill towards the far forest fringe. Right now though it is best …
Sylvia Shawcross The rains of November are cold but the snows of November are colder. It is said that an entire generation of young men from the Ukraine are gone now. They have died in the war. Now, I thought the war in the Ukraine was the “War for Civilization Itself.” We sent them tons …
