Shirley

Now That We’re Back Whether the sleek hulk set in glass ocean water far out our windows was stalled or gliding past, who knew? It must have made it somewhere, because the speck disappeared and no news came of a ship going down. Whether our house on the mango banana coconut tamarind breadfruit hill, with our bed so vast we lay in two different countries, was the easier on our living, or the one back home in our bare broken woods, how to tell? Only here, things were for play. Here we had sand enough for castles. Whether the waters surging up the sharded rocks, crashing and spuming salt and cresting toothpaste blue, were more the spectacle, or our g leeful gleaming sunburnt children, who could say? Neither would keep. For a sugared shining spell we had the both. Photography by Caroline Murch. Family trip, Playa Mar Chiquita, Manití, Puerto Rico      

Jello   So it comes from horses’ toenails and it’s sugary and artificially colored and everybody snickers at the very mention. But I keep it on hand—the store brand, usually orange. Somebody in our nearby family might be just getting over a stomach flu, and as we all know, any nourishment a person’s weakened system can keep down is better than no intake, period. Because the mother over there doesn’t want jello in her cupboards, I’ll make some with peaches floating in it and take it over to much rejoicing. But I needed the strawberry flavor the other week for a dessert recipe I was itching to try. I didn’t have any strawberry. The top layer involves adding to the jello frozen strawberries, which sounded to me a bit morbid because frozen strawberries get mushy. In our freezer, though, were crushed strawberries, highly sugared. Those can stay good for days in the fridge. And I had two packets of plain gelatin, maybe 15 years old, which I could include, along with water. I figured I...

Sunday morning very bright came in and I made pictures Made pretty window pictures Made pretty pretty pictures While in the streets, while in the streets Still jagged ice and soldier boots Still icy icy clutching fear Still salted shards, still tears like sleet Still blue-cold songs, still fall-down-slick hope-crusted trampled streets. Still pretty pretty light came in, still I made pretty pictures.   (From Hymn by Peter, Paul & Mar y . My church has those same  windows   but Sunday I stayed home. )