"Spring Forward" in The Fourth River

-


Because sometimes you need to think not cold but warmth.
Because sometimes you need to think not dark but light.
Because sometimes you need to think not fall back but spring forward.

 Here's an old essay, friends, that I first tapped out right here in this space that has, in the meantime, become a newish thing, a reminder that we can find a balance between two unsteady places.

Visit the most recent online issue of The Fourth River, and once you open the PDF, read the other wonderful stories, essays, and poems, and then find my essay "Spring Forward," on page 96, at the very back.

Thanks for reading. And believing in the transformative power of art. It is what will save us. It is what always has.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Baby Boy

-
Image
Right now the side of his face rests against my belly, skin to skin, his warmth magnified by mine. It is a wonder, an absolute awe-filled thing, that just days ago he was on the other side of me, tucked away and unseeable, a secret. Elliot. Elliot with the head full of hair. Elliot with the fifty-eight eyelashes. Elliot with the rounded nose that dips into rounded cheeks that slope to the tiny chin that quivers when he cries, lifts when he smiles in his sleep. A landscape. Elliot. Tiny boy so like and unlike all the other boys who have been born before. So like and unlike whatever small person I imagined my own son to be. Perfection is a rare if not impossible thing, but how could he not be, right now, so young, so soft, exactly as he is here, breathing in and out, making the sounds that all mothers and fathers know as first-speak. Secrets. He is revealing them to me, unspooling them by the minute, by the number of his sighs, and they tangle around my legs and body until I am war
Read more

Sliding Doors: One Last Glance Toward Europe

-
Image
We entered the Tube around 9:00 in the morning, a mass of noisy students and a few adults, taking up a section of platform. We had told the teens: "We'll start you on your journey, but you'll have to find your way back. Pay attention." The anxious ones stayed near us, the eager ones studied the green and red and blue and yellow lines on the wall map. "We'll need the Circle Line," one said, and after nodding, we passed the phrase among us like bread, or sweets, so when the train arrived, and the sliding doors opened, we all walked through them with enough nourishment and energy to know where we were going . Later, we stepped out of trams into the high Swiss landscape at Pfingstegg Station. After London, most of the kids didn't even look at the trail map. They just started up. One foot in front of the other, one sore-muscled groan after the other, a collection of revelations. We walked under rock ledges and over small streams.  We talked abo
Read more