Hello, I’m Jeremy Beaudry. Welcome to my place. Words, photos, drawings et cetera.*
* It's a life/work in progress.
Knitting at night
She is knitting at night. Her back is turned to me because she is keeping the cat company, who is dozing on the sofa. Her companion. Her audience. The click of the needles keeps time. My pencil slides over the tooth of the paper, searching for contours and volumes. The two of us keep focus. She, on yarn and pattern and movement. Me, on strands of wheat silk, draped cloth, and folds.
4 haiku
Snow piled in mounds.
Protective layer, perhaps,
To buffer the fear.
–
Cold cracks hands, face, ears.
Snow sounds different, strained.
I still ski the trail.
–
I heard cardinal,
chickadee calling to sun
grace this world, love us.
–
Something just over
the ridge, looming like fire,
licking snow and ice.
Two thousand twenty-five
Paradise
The world was all before them, where to choose… — John Milton, “Paradise Lost”
Last weekend
a low noise
the front desk
the size of a teakettle
an old space
the narrow space
of this labyrinth
so many words.
It’s a disaster
just facts
“Both.”
The courtyard
flushed face
background noise
light and air
a question
a devotional gesture
a head start
the essay title
the meaning of
a coffee cup, perhaps
something strange.
A fire must be tended
I am learning to heat the house by burning wood in the cast iron stove. Each stove, I expect, has a unique profile dependent on: the design, the particular manufacturing conditions, the length and path of the chimney, the installation, the location. You do not turn on a stove like a switch on a lamp, or a thermostat. You do not light a fire in a stove and walk away. There is a process to building a fire, slowly, iteratively. Of choosing the kindling, of feeding the right sized logs, of gauging the amount of oxygen needed, of preparing the bed of coals. Of knowing the variability of the flames, and responding in kind with micro-adjustments of position, airflow, fuel. It takes time and attention. Practice, in fact. A fire must be tended.
The Mystery of Extraterrestrial Pain