Even when I sit in the schoolhouse looking out the window from the red Naugahyde thrift store sofa I am collecting. There is my coddled cottonwood. The robins and Brewer’s blackbirds are finding worms after the sprinkler. I am waiting and hoping for the rabbits to return to my yard, offering lettuce and other delectables. And always, there is the ever-changing sky: crystal blue, puffed with cotton clouds, scribbled with crayon reds, heavy with smoke, or any of a thousand other variations. I keep gathering these images in words and lines to sustain me through the winter. Like Leo Loinni’s Fredrick, in one of my favorite children’s stories, it may look like I am doing nothing, but that just isn’t true.
