In A Painful Time Of My Life

When We Talk Of Flood Control, We Usually Think Of Dams And Deeper River Channels, To Impound The Waters Or Hurry Their Run-off. Yet Neither Is The Ultimate Solution, Simply Because Floods Are Caused By The Flow Of Water Downhill. If The Hills Are Wooded, That Flow Is Checked. If There Is A Swamp At The Foot Of The Hills, The Swamp Sponges Up Most Of The Excess Water, Restores Some Of It To The Underground Water Supply And Feeds The Remainder Slowly Into The Streams. Strip The Hills, Drain The Boglands, And You Create Flood Conditions Inevitably. Yet That Is What We Have Been Doing For Years.

Year's End Is Neither An End Nor A Beginning But A Going On, With All The Wisdom That Experience Can Instill In Us.

The Owl, That Bird Of Onomatopoetic Name, Is A Repetitious Question Wrapped In Feathery Insulation Especially For Winter Delivery.

Green, The Color Of Growth, Or Surgent Life, Enwraps The Land. New Green, Still As Individual As The Plants Themselves. Cool Green, Which Will Merge As The Weeks Pass, The Summer Comes, Into A Canopy Of Shade Of Busy Chlorophyll.

Some People Are Like Ants. Give Them A Warm Day And A Piece Of Ground And They Start Digging. There The Similarity Ends. Ants Keepon Digging. Most People Don't. They Establish Contact With The Soil, Absorb So Much Vernal Vigor That They Can't Stay In One Place, And Desert The Fork Or Spade To See How The Rhubarb Is Coming And Whether The Asparagus Is Yet In Sight.