Carole Moses

The most amazing things cross your eyes if you are looking for them. The other day, I looked out  my kitchen window and saw three sparrows on our deck eating seed that had spilled from our bird feeder.  Now I am not especially knowledgeable about bird species, but I knew these were sparrows. However, they were a kind of sparrow that I had never seen before, and I immediately dubbed them “chipmunk sparrows” since their markings resembled those of  a chipmunk. They had dark brown stripes on their heads, chests, and wings, alternating with rust colored stripes. They were plump little fellows and seemed to stride around the deck. I asked my husband what they were and he said they were a  form of native sparrow—not English—and he went to find our bird identification book for some  more information. But then I realized that I was not really interested in the taxonomy of the birds. Instead, what appealed to me was the fullness of a God, who had so many patterns to choo...

As we pass out of winter, which has its own stark beauty, we start to look for signs of spring. For some it is the greening of the weeping willows, for some it is the first crocus struggling to break through the snow, for some it is the first honeybee. For my husband and me, it is the first bird’s nest in our bedroom air conditioner. We live in an old house and inherited a behemoth  air conditioner in our bedroom, which stopped working shortly after we moved in. It is too heavy and bulky to move safely so we simply let it alone. But for the last few summers, starlings, we think, have decided to make their nest in it and raise their young. The plastic extenders on the side of the air conditioner have long since crumbled to pieces.     So in order to stop the birds from entering our home, we have stuffed towels and duct taped these openings closed. (If the adhesiveness of all duct tape were suddenly magically to disappear from earth, our house would crumble to the grou...

The other day my husband and I were sitting by the Susquehanna and the most amazing thing happened. As the water flowed gently by us it suddenly became permeated with flashing white Christmas lights. I asked my husband  what in the world they were. And he answered that there must have been a light breeze that made the water ripple and catch glints of sunlight. The river quieted and the lights disappeared. But then another light breeze blew by and and again the water was flashing what looked like white Christmas lights. This happened several times and made me think that older civilizations were quite sensible in seeing a magic in nature, which we have forgotten, enveloped as we are in scientific explanations. Lightning bugs, for example, could easily be explained as fairies in a midsummer night’s dream But magic and reality may not be at odds. Rational explanations of natural phenomena do not invalidate their otherworldly origins. Lucretius argues in De Rerum Natura that if there wa...

Several years ago, when my husband and I lived in Ohio, we lived across from an elementary school, which had a huge lawn facing our house. It was lovely in the summer to see the sea of golden dandelions bursting from the ground. It was a veritable carpet  of gold. Being from N.Y.C., I knew that dandelions were considered a weed by some—like that other maligned flower, Queen Ann’s Lace-- but not that they were ubiquitous. I said quite seriously to my husband that if we  ever lived in a place without dandelions, we would need to buy some seeds and plant them. This earned a humorous chuckle. Yesterday my husband and I were sitting by the Susquehanna, meditating. And right before my foot was a dandelion that had gone to seed, its silver globe-shaped body on the stem where the flower used to be. I picked it up and looked at it. What I saw was amazing, for there, within the outer filament of the head of the seed pod, was a intricate pathway of extending filaments. It looked like a s...

When I was teaching at Lycoming College, I had an art major in one of my literature courses which she was taking for a general humanities requirement. When we were chatting after class near the end of the semester, she told me about a take-home exam that she had in her painting class. For part of the exam, she was given a chart of one hundred shades of various colors, which she had to reproduce by mixing the primary colors in the proper amounts. I thought it was an intriguing test. But, as my husband and I drive on country roads this summer, I realize that Nature’s God puts this test to shame. Yes, the trees are almost all green, but nature manages to create a large spectrum for that color: forest green, jade, chartreuse, lime green, Kelly green, silvery green, olive green, blue green, mint green . . . and I could go on and on. And the autumn foliage will be similarly spectacular. I’ve often thought that a woman’s dress designer could do nothing better than to use the colors of autumn ...