Stems from the beheaded hazel crown, stems from the nearly-bloomed rosemary, are salvage from what was smothered and crushed in the snow storm two weeks ago. I scraped the stems to encourage new roots to reach down and taste the water. The cuttings stand in jars behind the kitchen sink beside last year’s salvaged hydrangea. Tree trimmers are coming soon to cut the downed Scots Pine into firewood lengths.
I responded to Sonora Review’s current call for submissions a week or so ago while snow lingered on the hill and froze into ice each morning. Their next issue seeks work related to “doubt.” The snow is nearly gone now, except for the receding mounds on the lawn heaped up from shoveling the road. An essay, I suppose, though simply prose submission is a simpler term allowing the essay to serve as verb:
Essay: verb: synonyms: attempt, make an attempt at, try, strive, aim, venture, endeavor, seek, set out, do one’s best, do all one can, do one’s utmost, make an effort, make every effort, spare no effort, give one’s all, take it on oneself
Here is Charles D’Ambrosio in the preface of his new and collected essays, Loitering, describing the elusive nature of the form, when prose is crafted not as information, article, argument or coursework, but something else–a portfolio of inquiry:
“Voice holding steady in the face of doubt, the flawed man revealing his flaws, the outspoken woman simply saying, the brother and the sister—for essays were never a father to me, nor a mother. Essays were the work of equals, confiding, uncertain, solitary, free, and even the best of them had an unfinished feel, a tentative note, that made them approachable. A good essay seemed to question itself in a way that a novel or short story did not—or perhaps it was simply that the personal essay left its questions on the page, there for everyone to see…an attempt whose outcome wasn’t assured.”
Kim K. McCrea 
That pretty much nails what an essay is to me.
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