Rows and Rows of Green

I was no artist. Even when I was little, I didn’t paint pictures, I painted lines. I have laughed to cover my shame about it for most of my life.

I was four years old when I stood at an easel and painted a page full of green in nursery school. I didn’t paint the sun or a tree or a rainbow. I painted green. Green lines. All green lines. Green line after green line until the page was full.

Eight Ounces of Canned Poem

One Saturday, my friend Rebecca Reynolds bundled herself in three coats and hiked up Roan Mountain with a jar in her hand. Standing on the mountaintop, she opened the jar, read a poem into it, then sealed it shut and carried it back down the mountain.