Claudia Putnam Quotes & Sayings

Cairn Stone
This is the rock he lifted
to lay upon a cairn
in a high place.
This rock, warmed by the near sun,
felt right, somehow, in his hand.
He decided to carry it down
to his mother, who lay in bed,
recovering.
It is so easy to please
a mother. Just to think of her
for a moment, from a high place,
and to carry that thought to her
in the form of a stone. — Claudia Putnam

I have read that long ago there was a land of glass castles that sank beneath the sea. It was not called Atlantis, but Lyonesse. This happened before history and across the ocean, but when I was little I wondered about that place, how it could be so beautiful and so lost. Sometimes it seemed that the land around my New England home was like that flooded country, with mud where the streets of gold should be and mayflies swarming where there should be lovely fishes, but here and there a shard of crystal to call the heart to beauty.
"Wetlands," in Phoebe. — Claudia Putnam

I beam back at her. Fuck the surgery, fuck the kids, fuck the men in our lives or no longer in our lives. This is sweet. When she catches up with me, I say, How many, just how many forty-plus women would do that?
We gaze back up at the face bleeding into the chute we've just skied. We *did* that, I crow. Someone should love us just for that.
Hangfire — Claudia Putnam