She Found Us
I noticed her sometime last week — a mud cup pressed against the beam just above the lintel, and inside it, perfectly still, a swallow. Blending in. I stood there reverently, thankfully still. Meeting a new colleague.
Gideon L. K. Pollach
The Very Rev. Gideon L. K. Pollach is the Rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, where he has been asking what the pond has to teach since before he knew he was asking.
What the Forest Knows
Vestry Dinner Reflection Those four sycamores — two at the rectory, two at the church — have been standing on this ground longer than anyone gathered here tonight has been alive. They have watched rectors come and go, vestries form and dissolve, building campaigns succeed and fail. They host countless nests, in
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They Remembered
These fish return to the same shallows each spring. They fan circular nests in sand. One settles at the center of each, guards eggs. The whole edge becomes a nursery. I worried we had closed that bottom forever.
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The Secret
Behind my office, four serviceberry trees hang heavy with fruit. Small berries, dark purple-black, sweet enough to draw blood. For four days, the trees become the center of everything.
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A Rescue
The bird was disoriented. Turns out he'd hit his head, we'd learn later. And from where he sat in the Pachysandra, two large mammals descending on him with barbecue gloves and towels probably did not read as rescue. He waddled away from us as quickly as a waterbird can on land.
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Divided
There were too many iris at the farmhouse in Virginia. And too few here. So Sarah got out the shovel.
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Site Fidelity
A sound from somewhere in the pines. That liquid, emphatic whistle that Baltimore Orioles make, too bright for early May. Then a movement. Then that color: orange so saturated it looks wrong against the needles.
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Ten Out of Three Hundred
Last October, my youngest daughter, Byrd, and I planted three hundred tulip bulbs in the ground. Three hundred. We were on our knees in the dirt for the better part of a weekend The final count, I can now confirm, is ten. Ten out of three hundred.
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Wild Geese
The matter at hand, specifically, is one goose. He appeared about ten days ago and claimed the path between the rectory and the church. Not the pond. Not the grass. The pathway. He is large, he is certain, and he has made his position on foot traffic abundantly clear
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Abundance
The pond didn't break the weir board. The abundance did. All that water, pressing outward the way water does, following the only instruction it has ever been given.
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Who Are Your Waters?
I am on vacation in Virginia as I record this, on the shores of the Pamunkey River. And I am not at the pond. But I am at one of my waters.
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Already Rising (Easter Day)
The pond didn't wait for Easter morning to begin its resurrection. It started without us.