Tag Archives: louisiana

Evening Light on the Levee

My truck, Mississippi River twilight, and Venus rising in the west. Some photographs are sharp. Others, like memories, are blurry. This one I snapped at random: the shadowy FJ silhouetted against a twilight sky, Venus hanging steady above. My old FJ Cruiser rested along the Mississippi River levee at Lone Oak Cemetery, back window openContinueContinue reading “Evening Light on the Levee”

Dark Room, Yellow Light: How “Wrecking Ball” Remade Emmylou Harris

I came across the Wrecking Ball CD in the late 1990s, pulling it from the racks at the Vernon Parish Public Library in Central Louisiana. The cover alone — a high-contrast black-and-white close-up of Emmylou’s face blurred and streaked as though dissolving into shadow or motion, pierced by a single vivid yellow glow that cuts through theContinueContinue reading “Dark Room, Yellow Light: How “Wrecking Ball” Remade Emmylou Harris”

Most Novembers I Break Down and Cry

“I can’t remember if we said goodbye.” That line from Emmylou Harris’s cover of “Goodbye” always gets me, and did again this morning, coffee in hand before the sun cleared the piney woods. It’s a simple lyric, almost plain-spoken, but it carries an unexpected weight. The kind that comes not from tragedy, but from uncertaintyContinueContinue reading “Most Novembers I Break Down and Cry”

Hello Winter, From a Longleaf Pine

I stand rooted in West Central Louisiana, a longleaf pine keeping quiet watch over the rhythm of the days. It is December first. The humans fuss over calendars, insisting winter has arrived. I shrug in silence. Frost may glint briefly across the yard. Ice settles now and then. Snow? Rare, fleeting, a story they tellContinueContinue reading “Hello Winter, From a Longleaf Pine”

Egg Sandwiches, Elementary School, and Timeless Memories

There was a time when joy came in the form of an egg sandwich. My friend Alan used to bring them to school, still warm from his mother’s kitchen, wrapped with care inside a reused plastic bread bag. When he peeled it open, the smell hit first: that mix of fried egg, hot oil, andContinueContinue reading “Egg Sandwiches, Elementary School, and Timeless Memories”