"To be holy is to be home..."

Susie Fisher 

This winter I became the fire keeper
at the hearth in the drafty bay windows
facing east.

Though the sun rises earlier now,

there were dark mornings 

where the only light available

came from the previous day's embers.

 

    A ball of newspaper,

    a Christmas letter,

    a heavy sigh,

    and a split oak log 

    from down by the Rivière aux Marais.

 

A recipe of sorts, for a flame.

 

How "strange to have the earth burning

within the domesticity of the home."

 

 

Nikon D3100, 50mm

 

 

 

Christmas dinner, 2020
iPhone 

 

The Early Hours of New Year's Day

Susie Fisher

"I don't have much knowledge yet in grief, so this massive darkness makes me small."

-Rainer Maria Rilke, 1904

I'm awake again at 3:00am

contemplating grief

--the time it takes,

the toll it takes--

the ways it is reinvigorated

at this strange hour

two winters on.

I move my feet over

to the cooler side of the bed, 

accidentally wake the cat,

sleeping where once

a tall, narrow body breathing.

I invite the agitated cat

under the covers;

scratch his orange head

and tent the blanket over both of us.

Sparks in the dark

--static electricity between my hand, his fur--

announce the arrival

of another year.

“Light is always more fragile at a threshold.”

From Beauty by John O’Donohue 

a year in review

Nikon FE2, 50mm

"Beyond the window's lace curtain the cottonwood tree in the yard seemed real enough, and the sky's gray light seemed handmade for the moment's heat like any fire. ... The whole illuminated, moving scene would play on in his absence, would continue to tumble into the future extending the swath of the lighted and known, moving as a planet moves with its clouds attached, its waves all breaking at once on its thousand shores, and its people walking willfully to market or to home, followed by dogs. ... He could feel the planet spinning ever faster, and bearing him into the darkness with it, flung. These were the only days. 'The harvest is past,' Clare thought, 'the summer is ended, and we are not saved.' ... There was not time enough to honor all he wanted to honor; it was difficult even to see it. The seasons pitched and heaved a man from rail to rail, from weather side to lee side and back, and a lunatic hogged the helm. Shall these bones remember?"

From The Living by Annie Dillard

winter/spring/summer

Nikon FE2, 50mm