Helena Writes

I saw a red-tailed hawk last week, camouflaged in winter white, no red tail flashing—playing on the wind! I stopped my car on that country road where I rarely meet another traveler. The hawk tumbled like a crow. I’ve seen crows play on the wind. This hawk wasn’t hunting. It was having a wonderful time!...

When I write, I really do want it to come from deep within me. Once the writing is on the page, I look at it. Then I ask, who is this for? What’s the voice? I assess where I want to coax the piece. So when writing began to come to me with older picture book voices, I was surprised, and I went with it...

Two nights ago, sitting by the open window in the quiet country woods, late July, I heard a bird sing—chirp! Chirrup! Chirrup! I listened and heard it again. Then it must have moved on. Startling to hear a bird at night—full dark...

When personal computers were brand new, in the late 1970s, a friend showed me exponential progression on his computer screen. “Look at this!” he said. I was awestruck...

Fall is late in coming this year. Our leaves, here in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, are usually blazing reds, yellows and oranges by September— two, sometimes three weeks in. Branches are bare by mid-October. But the trees in my woods are as full and green as summer, even after first frost three nights ago...

I’d visited a writers’ group in a nearby town. This is a rural place. Nearby is an hour’s drive. But the weather was still good, I’d heard they were serious writers, and there is no group nearer home...

The bears are asleep now that the temperature has dipped into the single digits, nights in these foothills of the Catskill Mountains. So, I’ve put out the bird feeders. I acquired this wisdom soon after coming here 23 years ago, when my sturdy feeder, made so that squirrels couldn’t chew it through, disappeared...

A semicolon has been used to punctuate complete thoughts within a sentence; it is somewhat arcane, I’ve thought, and been replaced by a period or an em dash (—). The above sentence could also be written this way:...

A beautiful snow is falling, coating everything. Here in this woods, once snow falls, in December or January, it doesn’t melt until the end of April. But this morning’s covering is fresh, fine. It may be what my farmer neighbors call a sugar snow, for the maple sap that will soon run. But I don’t know these secrets, coming from the concrete streets of Brooklyn...

I think the eyes open when one writes, just as they do when one paints, to a more subtle, finely-tuned world. I’ve just looked up from my notebook. The snow on the hemlock trees past my window makes a fine, latticework pattern. I didn’t see that before I started this writing. It’s a glimpse, a vision of bright order. Outer to inner eyes. I think I’ve gasped...