I had never seen a field of wildflowers quite like it. The ground had responded to the spring rains with a fertility that flashed flames of fire: reds, oranges, and yellows dancing in the wind like the tongues above the apostles on Pentecost...

I’m in my truck when I get a call from my great-nephew, Gus. He tells me he landed a job with a harvest crew. His voice sounds scuffed, like a work boot kicking a tire. 

My four-year-old niece is in my arms, her wispy blonde hair floating above her head like spider webs adrift the fall wind. We are jumping on a discarded box-spring mattress near a pond on the backside of a spillway dam. A giggle bursts from her lungs. “Again!!” This time, we are astronauts on the surface of the moon...

“You are in my prayers.” I say this all the time. Most the time I mean it and most of the time I hold myself to it. Truth be told, it’s hard to hold back the intentions logged in my memory...

I sit in a bedroom of my grandparent’s old house, a shelf over my head containing hundreds of thimbles collected by my grandmother who had no use for them, her fingers tougher than any ceramic after sewing the blue jeans, feed sack dresses, and cloth diapers of seven children...