Gary LeBel: BEAR HUG

The heady smells of leaf-slime and wet bark have returned. While walking along the woods outside the neighborhood (and with no particular destination in mind), Henry Beston comes to mind and those endless strings of mellifluous sentences he wrote in The Outermost House, a work on a quick read-through I once thought merely grandiose. But tasting the cold, misty spices of late autumn this morning, I welcome that big, earthy, bear-hugging prose of his. Though I’ve never done such a thing, I’d kiss him straight on the mouth for writing that book if he were here right now: such are opinions.

Drips
from the old wasps’ nest,
cold rain.

by Gary LeBel
Cumming, Georgia