Author Archives: C.M. Rivers

Digesting Memories: Of Food and Family

“If we want to create healthy change for ourselves and the planet, we will need to abandon the societal myth of food choice entitlement, stop defining the main course as meat, collectively see animals as sentient beings, drastically overhaul the ways we produce food, and rethink our insistence of assigning economic value to everything under the sun.”

Geese Flying Over

It’s the middle of January, what are you doing here? I ask this of both myself and the geese as I rise to the shallows of dreaming and break the surface. Oh, right, they’re Canadian. This is south for them, and my own reasons are not so simple. It is a lonesome sound, their squawking,Continue reading “Geese Flying Over”

Valentine ~ A Love Letter to V

You’ve lived here for time out of mind, between u and w, given of yourself, yet been grievously overlooked toward the back of the line, fifth-to-last, always in twenty-second place. Without you, no love, no forgiveness, no reverie. No vertigo, velvet, voodoo. Verses, violins, viticulture. No need for vaccinations, because – no viruses or variants.Continue reading “Valentine ~ A Love Letter to V”

Peace I Leave With You

May you ever walk in kindness, be it a walk of haste or of leisure – peace I leave with you. If you find gold in the stream may you throw it back – peace I leave with you. May your hands be generous, your words be ever gentle – peace I leave with you.Continue reading “Peace I Leave With You”

This Winter Morning

Reluctance to leave the envelope of bed, reluctance. But the whirring and humming, revving of the mind (faithful engine, reliable horse) harasses the body into obedience, and for good reason. There is wood to cut, snow to shovel, ice to melt, water to boil, pots to be washed, plans to be drawn, ragged roads toContinue reading “This Winter Morning”

Plants and Animals

If I were a plant, I might arrive at silence and stillness a little more gracefully.  I might meditate with greater success. If I were a plant, I think you would find that – impossible as it seems – I am both an annual and a perennial.  Both evergreen and deciduous, succulent and garden flower,Continue reading “Plants and Animals”

Fellow Travelers

There is more than one world.  Turn your attention now, away from the one that is always trying to sell you something, for time is short and you have work to do. Befriend yourself, settle into a homecoming, apprentice yourself to the dear friend of your own curiosity, to a sense of belonging, a familiarityContinue reading “Fellow Travelers”

Tread Lightly

You’ve been searching a long time now.  Somewhere along the way, you pause.  You begin to notice the intricacies of every texture, the textures of every intricacy. All the magic you overlooked becomes discernible.  How could you have missed it? It is at once ordinary and extraordinary, astonishing and unremarkable, poetic and prosaic. Seeing this,Continue reading “Tread Lightly”