Staunch workhorse
Solid, dependable
Never glamorous or racy
Trundling through seasons
Year after year.
Drawing the plough
Harrowing the furrow
Dragging the hay rake
Combustion engine
Pumping away.
Red Farmall
Green John Deere
Loyalties, generations deep
Billowing exhaust
Into thin morning air.
Slow-moving beast
Taking on earthy hues
Sinking into the acreage
Overcome by time
Finally idled.
New arrival
On the doorstep
Small black cat.
Wheezing, runny eyes
Ear mites and worms
Small black cat
Vet looks gloomy
Hope not proffered
Small black cat
Hand-fed, caressed
Cradled in laps
Small black cat
Feisty young ‘un
Up and at it
Small black cat
Pouncing lessons
Hearts won, much fun
Small black cat.
No smell announces the preparation of a meal better than the rich, sweet aroma of sautéing onions. It’s a humble staple of my pantry that I couldn’t do without. Luckily, I live in an area famous for its onions. I keep a special pair of blue swim goggles in my kitchen drawer for chopping the extremely pungent variety that grow in our region of New York State. Known as the Black Dirt, the fertile soil—a result of an ancient glacial lake—is rich in organic matter and sulfur. 
The latter gives our local onions their intense flavor and earns them a spot in farmer’s markets and supermarkets all over the Northeast.
Starting in April armies of bright green shoots march across the black dirt. By July, they’re standing tall. And in August the stalks wilt, their purpose served.
In September the heady scent of onions pervades the air and the onion crates are stacked high in the fields, waiting to be stored or transported to market.
You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone
and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.
Greeting the dawn in her many-faced beauty. 
The day begins in the Berkshires of Massachusetts overlooking Lake Pontoosuc, and from the flanks of Mount Greylock.
Cardboard box lunch on the beach:
Limp sandwiches, bruised apples, melted chocolate bars.
Fine grit lodged between our teeth at every bite,
Seagulls swooping in for the crusts.
A backdrop of frenzied whitecaps,
Larksong tossed skyward,
And a ripe aroma
Of dead crab and fermenting seaweed
Wafted our way.
The culprit?
Tugging at our shirts,
Slapping strands of hair against our cheeks,
Raising goose bumps on our legs,
Hurling sand in our eyes,
Encrusting us with a film of sea salt,
Wind—ever present picnic friend.
Curtains of rain
Sweeping across the bay,
The first tell-tale spots on the slate.
Then all in a rush
Cloudburst!
Mini water bombs hurtling against the roof
Snare drum on the windowpane.
Sixty seconds later
Nothing but drip, drip, drip.
One of the first things that comes to mind when I think of Ireland is rain. It is after all what earns the country its distinctive reputation as a land of fifty shades of green. And there are nearly as many kinds of rain, from the “soft day” mizzle that gently coats you in a film of moisture, to the driving curtains of water that sweep across the landscape and drench you in seconds. While in November a wet day can be an unrelenting downpour, in July a cloudburst often lasts less than a minute. As the familiar saying in Ireland goes, If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.
These images of the effect of waves were shot in Co. Mayo and Co. Galway on the West coast of Ireland.
The grey stone gable
Is the last vestige
Of the cottage on the headland.
Nettles grow thick
At its lichen-covered feet.
It faces west
Toward the sunset,
Toward America.
Who knew you could fall in love
All over again?
I’d gone my separate way
Without too many backward glances,
Just the odd intense
Pang in the gut
At the scent of seaweed on salt air,
Or the whiff of ladies bedstraw
Crushed underfoot.
And yet the sight of a stone wall curving over a hillock
Could trick the eye momentarily,
Sending memories coursing through the blood.
Who would have believed
A week in the coast guard station
Above Bun Owen pier
Would set the heart reeling with delight
At the soft haze of the Twelve Bens and Maumtrasna
Ringing the bay?
The wooing was gentle
As the rain.
Small things sent to delight me—
Posies of wild flowers,
The keening cry of oyster catchers
skimming the waves,
A pocketful of shells,
The sun setting in stunning bursts of light
Worthy of a baroque cathedral
Over Slyne head.
But there it was, rekindled again,
A love to end all seasons.
The oak root
Stopped me in my tracks,
Rearing out of the bog,
A creature of fantasy.
Sentry from a long gone forest
Mowed down by ice-age
And time,
Buried under eons of sphagnum moss
Rush and sedge,
Silt from mountain streams—
sandstone, granite, the odd fleck of gold.
All these and more swaddled its limbs,
Blocking out oxygen
Bathing it in tannic acid,
Preserving it:
Six-limbed,
One-eyed,
Bog monster.
Maumtrasna Mountains, Co. Mayo. Ireland
Melissa Shaw-Smith 