David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

The Riddle of Miniature Roadside Lighthouses

Miniature lighthouses—once you start looking, you’ll find more than you’d ever expect.  They stand guard at the edge of suburban driveways, at the entrance to commercial parking lots, along roadsides, and even atop fences.  Having nothing to do with maritime navigation, some are nevertheless wired with lights marking access to residences and businesses.  More elaborate and expensive than absolutely necessary to signify or illuminate a property, they are a statement by owners to all who pass by.

A Slice of Something Different: Visiting the Eternity Pie on Pi Day

It may be the world’s most unusual, largest, and permanent pie, but it’s no culinary treat with a pastry crust.  The Sedgwick Pie is an eccentric circular cemetery in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.  It’s a site  worthy of contemplation or a respectful visit on Pi Day, the annual commemoration of a mathematical constant—the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.  On a day celebrating the circle and a number that stretches to infinity, the cycloid eternity of the Sedgwick Pie seems perfect.

River Ice (poem)

Like cellophane stretched tightly over the mouth
of a jar, a thin skin of ice spans the slack water
while Elizabethan collars of frozen lace grace crusted
and glossy rocks congregating in the riffles.  Thick
old chunks huddled along the shore are healed
together from days of thaw following frost.  Lumpy
and uneven, in fleeting sunlight they appear like solidified clouds.

Mergansers swim skittishly in pockets of dark open
water.  Formally dressed in a duck’s tuxedo of black
and white winter plumage, they dive and disappear
into the frigid current.  Fishing wherever the river
hasn’t frozen, they resurface nearly dry, often a silvery
minnow grasped in saw-edged jaws.  Small and slender,
their spike-like orange bills are lit with the sharpest color yet alive.