Christina Svane

by Monica Blok

I noticed that we were, in that way, a lot like the rabbits we saw hopping across the hillside: needing to burrow, to feel safe from the dangers lurking in open fields.

Nancy wanted to wait to see the lilacs bloom. "That will be my sign," she said.

It wasn't Icarus, but a yellow tennis ball that flew across my mind, and I saw it lost in the tall grass at the end of its glorious flight, arcing high over the chain-link fence. If you came upon it lying there, say, in a year – muddy and moldy after

by Helen McCormack The Prompt  – A Walk; and with my coffee mug in hand I've got lost in a walk down Memory Lane, really Lanes. Couldn't find my Saturday notebook – lost in the present chaos of a NO house move, but, I found an old Jotter: I'm amazed, it has

San Francisco Ballet had their school and studios on 18th Avenue between Geary Blvd. and Clement, facing the glorious Alexandria Theater, and only a few skips in ballet slippers across Geary from the equally important landmark, Joe's Ice Cream, where, if I was lucky, a thin-mint ice cream cone would

I have been trying to remember that water is conscious, and every once in a while I notice it looking at me. I get embarrassed by how I am treating it – which is usually not very nicely – and that makes me notice more things.  I notice its willingness to be

This is the moment we've been waiting for. . .

But there you are. On the wrong side of the story.

I always imagined there was a hilltop shining with golden wheat where a woman with a red skirt, an apron and a babushka stood against the sky, swinging her scythe. . .

So - imagine all, or even some, of the great outcomes from this pandemic: The most global one in history, the Coronavirus, the one to crown all others.

What I notice first is the trembling, like a piano player trilling the high notes, Art Tatum levitating the house, and the house is the sea. . .

When I think of the world and all of us in it I see a young father lifting an infant out of her stroller as people go hurrying by and the flash of what shines from his face stops me on the street and freezes my feet, my heart pounding,

So I will hold fast to imagining the world I want, and speak my dreams, and look for yours

I have just heard from a most reliable source, that from the perspective of the universe, a second of our time can contain an age...

Everything is trembling, like plants in time-lapse films, the first green shoot shaking as if with fear, as it climbs up out of its dark dirt bed. . .

. . .And swings. Please let there be swings. Let there be picnics. And hiding places when life is hard and the only one you can face is your tree. . .

I was struck dumb. I was so angry I had no words, our usual kids' phrase, "that's not fair" as totally inadequate as waving a hankie to stop a bull.

It is the blinking of a firefly's light. It is the x that marks the spot on the treasure map that says, dig here. It is the fairy in the woods signaling, follow me.

Up the hill, through the field gate and then down the slope. We are lost in the country behind wild hedges, total freedom from roads or eyes.

We come out here, though, for some good reason, these distances that stand in for a spiritual path, these ways of going away, backtracking to some fork in the road you must have passed in the dark. . .

His body looked like a starving man, but his smile dispelled any worry about his well-being, as if he, alone in the whole village, knew the secret to happiness.

... that light sets the stage for the act that is just now being written.

On Saturday mornings I meet with a handful of women at Sandy's house to write.

A small orchestra of voices