Issue 12 Letter from the Editor

I want to tell you about the field mice and the tiny burrows they make in the dry grass, and how quick they have to be to escape the cats, and how clever the fox is at catching them. How today we passed a crisis of heat and are blessed with a breeze from the coast. How the apples are confused this year and ripen off-schedule. How Greta Thunberg makes me cry, how I love her outrage, “How dare you!”

And about the way the memory of the rose house finches brings me both happiness and grief that we have not seen them for two years now when before they fluttered just outside the window.

And about the good feeling of knowing all three of the neighbor boys from their various households and how it is to hear them playing together, too young to be troubled by the grown-up world yet. About how two poets met because one was unflinchingly critical and the other so exasperated that the one poem it seemed no one would ever love became the bridge to their friendship. About what it was like those several days, walking back to the spot, finding the body of the snake, finding another line to add to the poem I was making in my mind, remembering it line by line — about the dry air that time of year, how hot it was walking.

And about the sung poems we have made almost always while being in motion.

Elizabeth Carothers Herron
Graton, California