The American Grove

Mustang Grapes

In the Cut and Burn, outside Speed, N.C.

Imprint (Gas Station Concrete)

Route 122 Rainbow

If only screens were as generative.

When we passed it, my mom thought perhaps it was the house of a childhood friend, but she could not remember—the site seemed right but the structure seemed wrong. A house shed of its outer walls and most windows, yet the scalloped porch was obliviously intact unawares of oblivion and the step side yucca were sharper than memory.

Snow on Longleaf Pine

At Oak Spring, Walk from Bank House

Lobby Deer

Morning, December 25, 2025

The winds of autumn seem to have but one purpose—to polish the surface of the sky, buffing away every cloud so that sunlight runs depthless over blue. A month ago, so much shine would have felt unbearable for its heat, but now it does for its unyielding clarity. On the ground too, clearing comes—cotton, soybean, and timber tree after planting, after growth, will be reaped, their soil left as level as the fields of air above. Fall is the wrong name for a season whose primary direction is not down, but sidelong, leveling. 

Crane Tree, Donaldson Park

Reeds, Donaldson Park

Sweet Gum Leaf, Loblolly Bark

Afternoon Light (September 25th), My Room

I arrived mid-morning to help with what had not been sold, packed and taken the day before. Auctioning off, not goods, and art and books so much as memories, and beauty and thought—none of it my own, none of it I knew (not my house, not my aunt), yet sometimes familiarity alights on small moments and in small things, as in a bucket of birdseed left on the side porch, full and ready to be thrown as if she knew even if her hands no longer could someone else's would.

Remnant Pines, Corn Field