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Author: Pamela Kesling

  • Mutuality

    Mutuality

    And let us support one another and grow into one another, so that when we are tired and worn, when all about us has fallen to the ground, still may we stand together. Let us remember that tearing down one of us destroys us both. For were we not both born of the earth? Do…

  • Leaves in Flight

    Leaves in Flight

    Oh to be an oak leaf dancing on a November wind, flying high toward the clouds, then tumbling gracefully down again to do-si-do and cha-cha with sister leaves, furiously twirling together, then slipping away, landing quietly on a rooftop somewhere before jumping up for another round! What joy–what freedom! –after a lifetime of clinging tightly…

  • Slantwise

    Slantwise

    November always has me thinking of mortality–mine, yes, and that of all that lives– the withering, the drying, the slowing down until the eventual ceasing. But that blaze of slantwise light setting the maples aflame just before dinner– the bears filling up before slumber, the tiny wild creatures stockpiling acorns before the ground freezes over–…

  • On a November Evening

    On a November Evening

    The brilliance of November at dusk! Hilltops lit up like a box of flaming matchsticks, burning brightly beneath rose-gold and lavender clouds. I hope my dying is like a November evening, wrapped in a cozy, fiery glow, celebrating in quiet exaltation the apex of life. As my season of frozen, silent stillness approaches (for death…

  • Coffee Shop Life

    Coffee Shop Life

    Sometimes I crave that coffee shop life I used to lead, the erratic schedule, the strangers and friends coming and going, the smell of new books and old, drowned beans, the folk singers, chess players, immigrants, gossip gatherers and solo studiers, the painters, sculptors, writers, anxious students and relaxed retirees. I used to make a…

  • Ghost Moon and I Staring in Awe at the Changing Leaves

    Ghost Moon and I Staring in Awe at the Changing Leaves

    Ghost moon hangs suspended, translucent in the autumn sky, content as we–mortal, fading, too– to rest, breathless, watching the trees array themselves in the mantle of brilliance only allotted them for this brief season.

  • On Beauty

    On Beauty

    I wanted to write something beautiful, So I looked around And tried to capture the splendor Of the sun, the essence of a spring blossom, The cadence of a robin, The nature of a cloud– But perhaps beauty cannot be caught, Or perhaps I don’t have the skill. Perhaps beauty lies only in the brevity…

  • Sitting Among the Falling Leaves

    Sitting Among the Falling Leaves

    The trees did sway In the breeze this way And that. And the leaves Did drop to the ground, Fall all around where I sat– The green and the brown, The red, orange and gold, They plummeted down– Like birds, so bold!– One landed on top of my hat.

  • Entwined

    Entwined

    And Love, when we are old and have lost the elasticity and supple flexibility of our youth, let us remain thus: stiffened bodies and steadfast souls yet entwined, wrapped up in one another still, holding tight to that which nurtured and sustained us, clinging to our love and the enthusiasm that first propelled us.

  • Between the Lines

    The lines that inform our existences–that circumscribe, describe the borders between our reality and unreality, our understanding of the world we walk in–are faint, blurry, ephemeral. What do we know of the space between certainty and uncertainty, knowing and doubting, acceptable and unacceptable, trusting and questioning? Dividing each binary is an inconstant boundary, wavering, traveling…