A Miscellany for an Easter Weekend

• lemon-painted Italian mug
• fine-pleated flannel nightgown
• the recipe for two-day-marinated spare ribs from Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking
• the idea of poetry as ancient, unfettered spirtual solace
• a card with a fine Scottish white duck
• spring cherry tea
• Minoan swallows on an ancient wall
• a fragile light-struck spider web
• the possibility of rereading To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway
• lingering in the exquisite prose of that childhood favorite, The Sword in the Stone
• remembered donkeys on the beach in Scarborough
• egg shells colored with onion skins, with beetroot, turmeric, or marigolds, with tea leaves or ground spices, with carrots, sweet woodruff
• the weathered legs of wooden benches on a garden path
• Monet’s woman reading
• a pink tulip
• a Bonnard bowl of fruit
• the Robert Bly line “where the spirit horses drink”
• the face of Botticelli’s Madonna of the Pomegranate
• smoked salt on roasted cauliflower
• a bath sponge

images:  Christie B. Cochrell and friends