August 17, 2011 by Linda Bergeron.

By Linda Bergeron

It is the cool of the evening in the first week of July. It was nearly 90 degrees in the late afternoon, but now, at an eight o’clock dusk, with the brightness of the sun having long descended westerly over the ridge, the cool greens of the varied tree leaves, the bushes, and the watered lengths of grass create a softening in the quiet.

Where are the evening birds? The drops from the upward cascade of the sprinkler in the strawberry bed also dowse the nearby maple, its bottom leaves bobbing under every hit, while the plaza of a thousand blades of grass are silently drenched. Each small activity is noticeable in the great pause of day’s decline. A single wingéd thing darts through the yard’s low cathedral and is quickly gone.

The moment feels like a whole trail of seasons in a single day. While the slow hours of a distant winter, in memory, would have dragged its long gray drape – occasionally freshened in whiteness – and dulled by the constant cold - here, in summer, a day evolves through many incredible changes.

Long before dawn, when the first solitary bird sounded a meek minor key announcement shyly, and the un-darkness began in the northeast casting change upon the highest places, day moved in. It will be a slow April-almost-May series of moments in these early hours as the sun sends brushstrokes of light to touch further and further down toward the bottom of the hillsides, bringing brightness, cow calls, the slow waking day sounds. Had one looked at the mountains earlier there may have been that glow of pink upon the last snow tops when the un-awakened valley was still in old night’s shadow.

Remnants of spring stand as spent bloomed irises, their now-shabby tops upon still-strong stems; as the decadent poppy leaves, bleached and fallen over; as violet leaves (once the first tiny green when still there was snow), but now like enlarged green hearts thrilled with the early summer moments. Potato plants in rows are vibrant and thirsty; cucurbits are gaining in health, vigor, and size by the hour. The peas are crowding themselves and pendulous, all of white blossoms gone, tendrils reaching, in silence asking, ‘Where’s the string? Oh, I’ll grab hold of you! Upward we go!’ They dangle their pods so they won’t be forgotten, for their peak moments are so very near.

The basil impossibly gets greener in their scant gloss, its leaf edges curling slightly down from their rims so they can thrust their surfaces ever more so toward the sun. The tomatoes are surely deciding this very day if they can proceed upward and bush out now, or if they cannot possibly recover from that earlier weakness, and will look sad or hang low, unexcited by the season….

It is only mid-morning and dawn was such a long time ago. When the dew is fully surrendered away to the burden of the heated and breathtaking air, and the sky is the bluest blue, and the sun shines down upon it all like a great blessing of life, it is without doubt a summer day.

The heat builds up in the great surround of the valley, lying still to the utmost in some places, shimmering in others. Were we idle enough, we could patiently watch to see the grass blades heighten, or measure the amazing rapid changes in the corn.

It takes nearly a full summer of light for the day to go on toward its end, to the banter of the birds as the radiant light begins to fall from its angle, dwindling ever so slowly into little shadows in the other direction, inching up then dissolving to non-existence.

There is a quiet, and a change of activity. It has been like an evolution of seasons in but 15 hours, as darkness moves closer in, and the cool returns. Indeed, a summer day.

Originally published in Hells Canyon Journal, July 27, 2011

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May 23, 2011 by Linda Bergeron.

Poem by Linda Bergeron

talking, tables and their parted chairs, long mirrors
making a so-wide panorama of faces and heads,
tall Carnegie windows opening the walls,
heightening everything, as they do

looking North, the gray spring evening sky glooms
a neutral background, a rustic alleyway fronts red brick,
three-storied and thinly armed in wrought-iron;
a saturation of art awashes the gray
in color, sound, voice, music – and surrounds
like an old shawl that people have worn for ages together,
in the most ancient of practices, as both preamble and stage
for comfortable talk, insightful comment, smiles, retreats,
little shards of deep friendliness, renewed acquaintance

from the East, the distant silent tower,
a fellow building close and eminent,
thick with great stone of other generations, holding
arched windows almost like half-circle starbursts
but dull, staid, and beautifully old

from a long South room - shininess, bright color,
reflections bouncing, capturing, relaying, dancing
all the possibilities: voice and tone,
the dialogues of friends; entries, exits,
stairs to all those other places, where stowed
workshop cupboards await the hands
to paint and paste and pot

in the West, a wall of pebble rock worked, and
finished! and hung in color, textural detail, while
voyeurs’ fingers are stilled against the desire to touch;
the variety of landscapes of color - as light as fog, as potent
as arrays of rock, or ripples of water near autumn grass,
vast intimacies of color, dimension and contrast,
alive with suggestion, and delayed to a pause,
that after silent thoughtfulness before each frame and form
there is the moment’s invitation to be there, really there

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October 11, 2010 by Linda Bergeron.

By Linda Bergeron

This is all about change, and growth, and personal development. Ah, it can be a nice view in the rear view mirror of life.

I was a shy child, knew that I was loved, and had the fortune of a solid, enjoyable childhood with both parents and a sister. I grew up in a modest home with my needs met, and nice surprises. (Dad liked to celebrate birthdays by taking us to high-class restaurants requiring that we dress up, and Mom made sure that a couple of trips into the city for a Broadway show or two covered a few other celebrations.) There were aunts and uncles, cousins older than I, visits to others’ homes over the holidays.

Importantly I think, all the oldsters had lived their childhoods and adolescent years through the Great Depression, so having plenty to eat, small gifts to give, good jobs, homes, and good times together were occasions that were full of stories, jokes, many, many smiles. They were thankful for all they had and their lives showed it.

I was a watcher. I was hugged and entreated to join in. I warmed up slowly and smiled and ate, and lapped up the goodness of ‘family’ like a happy pup.

School was a challenge, but I strived to do my best, and winced when I heard another oral report announced. Dad had finished the ample attic of our Cape Cod house into a bedroom each for my sister and I, and sitting in the seat of the front dormer was a favorite reading place for me.

Mom and Dad were fine models of affectionate parents. She took care of the house, had us girls do dishes, clean our rooms, hang laundry; she worked part-time when we were older; enlivened our home with her sewing, crochet, and painting. Dad loved his drafting work in an office with a friendly mentor Sam; always had a building project in the works, with wood, or concrete or something; took the small downstairs bedroom for his den (why he built those upstairs rooms, of course); was up late working on his book, about a math higher math than I could understand as an elementary student. He loved the yard, the woods, driving to beautiful places, and camping. The out of doors was his church, he said, and I loved his church.

They all accepted me as quiet and reserved, and egged me on as gently as they could. The unspoken family motto was that we were a unity of support for one another, and the blessing words were, “I love you.”

Then my sister became a teenager, Dad’s health got trickier, Mom got sick, my best friend of all time moved away, and Mom and Dad decided to sell our house and move too. She became very ill very fast; I was not told she was dying; I struggled with a new school and classmates (in the south) who were about two years further developed socially than I.

I could of course write an entire long book about my high school years, long marriage of challenges and how I emerged, divorced and raising a last child, alone, at 46.

Now you know my background, reader. I believe our childhood is like the foundation of our whole house – our beliefs, our ability to trust, that spiritual knowledge that we grow up with (or without). That beginning is what we fall back on when life throws us fast balls, or when we make horrendous mistakes and have to scramble back to an even road. It’s what we have for answers in the middle of the night when our first child is very sick, or when a letter in the mail changes a day from normal to unthinkable. It is the great underlying realm that we view our world from (even as we dream), our lens that, over time, we learn to polish and aim and carry at our sternum from which we look and look and look.

I did not mention that I was a fearful child - only learning to ride a bike at age fourteen because I was afraid of falling, avoiding ladders and cliff edges because I was afraid of heights (Mom had vertigo), afraid to speak up because listening was so much more interesting, and my inner voice always so much more dependable. I grew in manageable, safe areas, but it was very slow.

Even as an adult I had never traveled alone. I was in my fifties, and my sister (the first-born, independent, very traveled person) was visiting from the great diagonal line of Florida to Oregon in her van. She would be driving back soon and I suddenly wanted to travel with her. We made the plan that we would drive away together, stop in Salt Lake City overnight, and I’d catch the short air flight hop back to Boise, and home. It was a perfect first time: a short flight, great plane ride, do-able. And done! I definitely felt that leap of growth.

Next time, only a few years later, we planned a reunion on the east coast to visit relations. We would travel up through the states in my sister’s van, and I’d fly in to join the trip in Raleigh, NC and, at travels’ end, fly back home in the west out of Washington, D.C. This was a much longer ride, and when all was done, and I had a full journal and many photos of this memorable trip, I felt like a woman of the world, capable of all kinds of things.

Then last year, after my oldest son had waited several years for me to take him up on his invitation to visit him in Alaska, I did. It was a marvelous flight along the coast with a window seat where I could view all the bays, the long line of cresting waves far below, the wondrous view upon the marriageable terrain to ocean world.

I knew there was an offer in Denali Park for a guest trip in an eight-seater, two-engine plane that was ‘flight-seeing’ around Mount McKinley and the giant world of huge sloped valleys, highways of glaciers, braided riverbeds and crusted peaks of snow in clouds. I said Yes to this, was appropriately nervous the day of, but followed through, finding myself in no less than the co-pilot seat for a grand escort and fear left behind on the ground.

Imagine me, doing these things? My sister, my daughter, this eldest son – they all know me, have known me through the years, and see me now. See the pictures that I could only have taken from where I truly sat! (And my son was in the rear of the plane, so he really saw me get on and off.)

The adventure of life is available each day. It was there when I struggled with feeding and caring for young children, and my concern about what they learned and how they felt. It was there, inherent and strong as ever, when I felt the onslaught of obstacles and cried and would have beat my chest if it had done any good, learning lessons, getting through it.

Adventure lives as I read a wide array of history and commentary and feel the strands of understanding catching to one another, and having conversations of discovery and insight with another who reads, late at night.

I think I learn the most when I stand outside listening to the morning; sometimes it is silent and I wait for that one bird that may call from afar. Traveling in a solo rhythm over miles, beside rivers, paralleled by crags and wild growing things and the flow of thoughts that arise as I, in the present and moving forward, carry my history, the ancestor spirits alive in me, and the wherever that I am moving toward.

If the moment is blessed, the eagle will let you see him, or the formation of the rock will be alive to your eye and the feeling that comes to you.

It has been pointed out to me that the eagle is so revered because he can go higher than any person can, that in his lofty world he can linger on the current of air, relaxed and beautiful, that his eyes can see further, of the wide and rounding view of earth, and if we imagined ourselves looking out from his eyes, we could see far also.

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March 26, 2010 by Linda Bergeron.

Fiction By Linda Bergeron
For whatever reason, they were wayfarers in winter, a group of people headed somewhere, landing for the cold evening, at dusk, in a town of hopeless barrenness – really a short row of house-huts along a wide dirt road, facing a boundless steppe, but backed by a thin break of forest.

For whatever reason, a large quiet man and a woman fell to sleeping in a hut together. She took the bed, deep with quilts and blankets, and he took a place by the small hearth.

She awoke in the night, hours before dawn, to see him huddled at the stone cold hearth with no fire. She knew right away that she could not have the warm bed only; he was suffering from the cold, crouched and shivering.

“Come,” she said with sudden authority. “Come into the bed.” He roused and did as she told. He crawled over the foot end and found his way in.

“The wood was wet and would not burn.”

She quickly swung the covers away from her curled back, saying “Lay against me. You must get warm.”

So he did. She felt his massive body slowly relax then soon fall into a slumber of even breaths. It was unwieldy for one to be so close without an arm across the other’s body, her body that he leaned into.

“It’s alright. I am covered. Throw your arm across. It’s alright.”

She fell asleep in the rhythm of his breath, with his arm innocently across her hip.

She would half-awaken, feeling his breath, his warmth, remembering that he was there. And fall to sleep again.

When she was aware he was laying there, awaking as she was awaking, his fingers felt her skin. She smiled to herself: his hand had found the only inch of break in the cloth on her body, and unconsciously did little affectionate touches like a sleeping child would caress its mother.

When she was fully awake, eyes closed, laying in the warmth of this bed, their two bodies close, she realized her toes were playing footsie with each other, something she noticed that she did in her years of lonesomeness.

Her touched her, and why would she shirk? It felt good. He thanked her for inviting him to the bed. “I had to,” she said.

He said soft words, and began a little exploring of her body. She responded in little moans. He found her breast and played with the touch of it. She was turning toward him, eyes closed, accepting his lips on her mouth, feeling her own strong response, taking in the smell of him, the ease of his actions, his no rush reaches, even the moments of stillness, deep in morning warmth together.

After she had thrown back the bedcovers, exposing herself, after she had reached for his haired erection after his invitation, they were very very close. He was patient, they kissed, they were a man and woman fully together.

For some reason, they did not talk much at first. He suggested, knowing they would be leaving the hut and joining the others and continuing the journey, “We should say we are married.”

This worried her, and he saw her thinking hard. “I…I am not divorced from my husband. He has been gone eight years. I do not know if he is alive or dead.”

“What do you feel?”

“I think he’s alive,” she offered. “I am strong. He does not bother me.”

They were quiet together.

“We do not know each other,” she said.

“We know plenty. You were very good to offer me the bed when it was so cold.”

“You were so cold. I had to.”

“No, you did not have to. You did. You are a good person.”

“Will you protect me?” she asked. It was strange to ask. It was not what she meant.

“Are you in danger?” she queried. “Are there things I should know about you?”

She remembered that he spoke evenly with the other men, that he always had good suggestions. He was a man that was as a nation to himself.

“No, I don’t harbor enemies. I would not endanger you. But,” and he thought here carefully, imagining what he might do in unexpected circumstances, “if something came up and it would not be safe for you to know me, I would deny our relationship…so you could not be hurt….”

He felt her stiffen a little.

“…by a nod or a glance, something to tell you, but no one else, to warn you.”

She was thoughtful. They were perfectly at ease with one another. This was rough territory. There were desperate people around, men who would sell anything to their own advantage; people who were aimless, or broken. It would be good to feel his protection, to be allied with one such as him. She had no trouble imagining them traveling a long time together.

“Maybe,” she offered, and it was a thought that came suddenly to her, “maybe you could give something away, like carry a coin in your pocket and if a time should come, offer it to the person of doubt, put it on the table, be sure that I can see.”

He nodded, still close to her body, unworried.

“People grow old together and then one of them dies,” she revealed her fear.

“People are ready by then. So, they enjoy each other while they can.”

“Do you drink?” she asked.

“Sure, I drink.”

“One? Or two?”

“Sure, sometimes two or more. I enjoy drinking now and then.”

“I can’t tolerate drunkenness at all.”

“That’s okay,” he said.

“You know,” he said to her, looking her strong in the face, “we are married. God married us. You did the right thing. We have been perfectly comfortable with one another, no fears, no pretense.”

She knew he was right. ~ L.W. Bergeron

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February 22, 2010 by Linda Bergeron.

By Linda Bergeron
Walking errands: going down the street “looking for a feather,” and corrected my thinking to “being where I might find a feather.” To the library to make copies before mailing the envelope to the friend: the magazine pages were a hard size to get a left and a right onto a single copy (silent grumbling). Thought instead: to make copies at the newspaper office. A stop at the ATM machine but it did not work: snowmobilers were in town all weekend and here it was a full hour before the bank would open (sigh). Backtracked to the library and slowly, deliberately printed out single pages, sealed the envelope, borrowed enough petty cash to cover the mailing of packages.

Walked to the post office and shipped the four packages I had. Walked to the phone company to drop off sprouts for employee Tom. Paused in the parking lot to greet former landlord Bill who, at 84-plus keeps going smiling, walking, doing, and I related my south-end-of-town-house temperature yesterday morning of 14 deg. F, but that this morning it was 10; he said his house across the street from here had 13. We smiled. I offered, “But… it’s going to be a sunny afternoon,” and he agreed as we parted.

I walked homeward down S. Pine past Velda’s house, thought-of-a-feather-and-saw-a-feather (interior smile). Saw two black birds flying happy together above me (thought of the spirited friend), then a third, trailing. Found: a couple more feathers outside Fran’s house, then another, larger, less fragile.

Turned the corner onto Dawson, spotting a hawk in the distant bare willow trees in the southern creek pasture. Watched him, felt his body watching back, with my full awareness of the intense sun shining upon me from the peripheral left, sensing his message that the times are still critical; I remembering the aboriginal’s retelling last night on the phone of how a scout would place his own vision behind the hawk’s eyes to see what he, a man, could not.

Walked home: a lovely, cautious, take-nothing-for-granted early spring morning. Inside the front door, emptying my pocket I found the bank card that did not work was another, similar-blue card (interior smile). I swept the entry floor, which I had been meaning to do for days.

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December 10, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

I saw him twice, bringing donations of books his children had outgrown; the children who were here in the summer but returned to live with their mother in California; his smile, his concern about the book he could not find that was overdue and how much it related to his life overseas.

After his death I was in a quandary for a few weeks, knowing it was inappropriate to send out the library system notice after his sudden death. I sought the advice of a warm-hearted clerk at the main library after realizing the family could be going through his things and that the library was hoping to get back that brand-new book – so that correspondence was probably timely. She suggested a well-worded gentle letter explaining the situation.

The obituary did not have local addresses for his relatives although the surname has many people here whom I don’t know that well. I wrote a note to the funeral home director, who called me, aghast. “I’ll pay for the book myself! The family is absolutely devastated.”

I felt horrible; she was right. I said the branch library could simply cover it. We ended the conversation with her saying she’d seek permission to get into the house. In a few days I found the book in the book drop. I checked it in, relieved, paid the fines, and took it home to read what he had read.

I was halfway into it, having marveled at the writer’s talents which were those of a remarkable person who had amazing life experiences and discovered rather well into maturity that writing was a venue for him. The stories were wondrous and disturbing. I was soon done. This was, I knew, not a book to simply put on the shelf between the alphabet of other author names. It needed cleansing, and release, and so, at home, I ‘smudged’ the pages with great intent and compassion for this soul who held it at a poignant time.
Judging from his presence with me and the little I knew of the situation I came to believe that with the children gone, he was bereft and floundering. The story in the newspapers was that he had been drinking with a visiting friend in the evening at home, after a day of shooting, and accidentally shot himself.

I can believe all of these possibilities ~ that the book was not lost, but that he may have decided to keep it as meaningful and at hand, and to pay for it [Have I not done this once myself?]; that the accidental shot was truly an accident, or, perhaps it was no accident at all ~ perhaps even the friend could not tell; and that it does not matter to any of us here on earth what happened because it was a fateful moment between him and his Creator; and all who are left behind – whether of flesh, entanglement, embrace or simple acquaintance – are minus his presence and simply given a mystery to come to personal terms with. LWB

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December 10, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

Taking the flame to the crisp
Dry-green sweetgrass’ end curl;

Keeping the blow of my breath
Captive in my mouth while the feather instead
Takes the task: to fan the barely alive ember
into a purging spirit;

Holding the book of stunning stories aloft,
so every page is arrested in the new air
of sacred smoke;

Preparing for this next change ~
The sudden, unexpected one
That will fit the puzzle someday,
That will come to be understood
As, even pained, perfect.

Linda Bergeron writes from Halfway, Oregon.

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November 15, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

“Standing at the River, from the Road”

 By Linda Bergeron

Standing at the river, from the road ~

It’s in-con-se-quen-tial if your eyes are closed,

And you’ve opened your senses to the world.

Watching from a place that is afar ~

When you know a river, you can see it anywhere,

Even when the fog is thick you see it still.

            The rocks are always at your feet,

            The skirmish on the bank is small;

            In the great adventure of grav-i-ty

            The long shared feast is best of all.

Being-in-the-world’s the place to be ~

Quieting the self to hear the message in the wind,

When you’re standing at the river,

                                    At the river, from the road.

[under the influence of a bluegrass music festival, and the early morning hour in Denali at Kantishna, “the meeting of the rivers”]

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November 15, 2009 by Linda Bergeron.

I came to understand that, looking at societies and even people in general, there are basically those who are earth-based and those who are not. In simple terms, there are those who appreciate the gifts of survival and living that come directly from the earth and respect them enough to protect them, and to teach their children about them.

And there are those, ‘civilized’ to such a degree, that they live out their days not in the context of the earth, but of buildings, social institutions and packaged realities.

After this insight, I was reading a Jack Weatherford [professor of anthropology] book, which carried the reader from the formation of continents, through the various ages of man and the important division of foragers and farmers. I was struck with the simplicity of this concept of the diversion in the path of men, and where it led.

And then the phone rang and I was talking with a friend of like ponderings. After we parted, I returned to the keyboard, intent on not dropping the thread of thoughts I had earlier. Since I was reading another book on and off, I noted its influence. Oh yes, a little background: I have been re-educating myself on the aboriginal experience on the so-called North American continent since late 2006, taking the time to review what current school textbooks on American history look like these for middle- and high-school students, and digging incessantly deeper into source documents and eye witness accounts while visiting regional sites [northeastern corner of OR counties; western Central Idaho – all Nez Perce homeland].

“Thoughts brought up by reading (mostly) from Weatherford’s Savages & Civilization, with topical checks into Johnson’s History of the Jews:                      

HISTORY [which enlightens the topic of Christianity]                                     

• School history: does not describe – favorably or extensively - about non-Christian science, art, unbiased politics or literature, etc.
• Suspicion: farmers thought they had to work harder than foragers [Old Testament taught they should toil and suffer] – while foragers played and enjoyed life more; farmers had more stress, required more specialty…..Qs – Did they become angry? Were they coerced to be/remain farmers? If so, by who? What?
• Farmers/Domesticators
  • don’t allow for nomads
  • ‘squeeze out’ nomads and foragers
  • cut up geography with ‘owners’ and ‘conquerors’
• word: colonize (v.) from Fr. colonie; Latin, colonia, colonus meaning husbandsman, from colere, to cultivate…………….[sadly interesting]
• you-are-your-language (p. 132)….modern: other countries want to learn English,  may be a very good language since naturally derived from all other languages….
• An earlier insight: people are earth-based or not-earth based
  • earth-based : loves and appreciates and works with
  • non-earth-based: struggles, holds grudge (afraid to be angry at God when they should be angry at their religion – not the same)

EDUCATION in America

• If teachers are asked, “Why don’t US students’ world history classes include as much about Canada, Africa & S.America (and other nations) as it does western civilization? Some likely answers: “So much history to cover, they’ll get more if they go to college;” ….and all those who do not go on to college, but still vote and raise children?
• What is not said – western civilization history is ruthless, disturbing, in conflict with religion – so ‘we can’t teach the truth’
• Not unrelated: I remember as a high school student who was very familiar with the library shelf, that those Dewey system areas for Medicine and Law in the late 1960s were always empty; I wondered, why?  It didn’t take me long to consider that Doctors and Lawyers had hold of and a monopoly on  the information
• What Oregon education [the only one I’ve studied] provides is a diluted, incomplete and misleading history education; as a library worker who watches the incoming catalogues and constant advertising, a new suspicion: mainstream textbook publishers are as controlling and narrow as the rest of the media  
• “Still worried about Infidels” – mainstream educators and historians continue to present history from the deeply ingrained western viewpoint – even the secular ones don’t realize it; and I am reminded of Professor Jim Craven’s concept - the cloning of ideology.

Excuse me while I get back to burning leaves.

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October 15, 2008 by Linda Bergeron.

Five ways of looking at…….Harvest

I.Stepping into the morning yard with hot mug,first outdoor breaths,I spot the fallen plumsnestled in the rascal grass.I stretch my shirt into an apronthat will hold each oneas I take them to the kitchen,close to my chest, full of aroma,little fleshy bounties at last, since the long ago days of spring.

II.When the heat and spirit-warmth of Sunchange how it arcs the day,and knowing that diminishing is the next journey-way,one hungers alreadythe absence that will comeand runs out of doorsto greet the more precious September sunin a desperation July did not know.

III.Last flower of its kind, from the bush that a moon ago was full-headwith blossoms.I pluck it with my nail, todaya valuable harvest of pink and yellowto set in a tiny vase - remembrance and presence in a single one.

IV.Tucking in the still-green tomatoes in the coming on of twilight,under a sheet, draping off the edges where the cold could come in;

covering the solitary late-flowering morning glory ~all grown up and ready to bloom, so late in August, then willing to adjust from the random weed-and-rock bed to a pot of soil I gave it, a sturdy rod to lean on.She adjusted and continued to present her daily purple show;and lastly, the petite pepper who tried so hard to bear some fruit, andcarries now ~ a large and a small ~ misshapen bells,glossy greens that hang awaiting weather’s final tale.Covered, tucked, little attentions ~surely a way to say a fortnightof evening goodbyes and I-love-you’s, to the season’s garden.

V.What abundance!the evening bird voice, no longer the cacophony of many in unison,but now a single abbreviation of one telling the listening a single secret;

the bowl of fruit and the ease with which my hand travels over thelushness to select and bite into, another

the dried slices, plump and plentifulin an aromatic cupboardawaiting the hunger that winter’s coldwill bring;

how like the other side of the fecundityof spring is this:richness, plenty, fruition,blossoms and bees and breezesthrough long hot days,evening stars, meteors,Pleiades sparkling in the nighttime black,and chilled rosy sunriseslaunching toward autumn.

Poetry by Linda Bergeron

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