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brtom.bsky.social
Tom Murphy
@brtom.bsky.social
490 followers 1.1K following 2.7K posts
Made in Illinois
https://btocarm.substack.com/ https://brtom.org
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brtom.bsky.social
A snow-covered patio deck. Snow covers steps, railing, flowerpot, picnic table, seating ledge.
December 10, 2025 at 1:52 AM
brtom.bsky.social
Yeah. Winter's kind of creepy.
A dark night sky with lighter clouds, high-rise apartmetn building on the right, structure with lights at lower left behind dark trees with snowy white highlights.
December 9, 2025 at 3:23 AM
brtom.bsky.social
Hi :-)
Close-up of paper and printed items: a lime-green envelope on which is written Hi! - above the triangular corner of an embossed journal cover - above a book blurb reading 'of hope in our dance with mortality" —Cornel West - above white paper reading 'ormation in God" - beside a yellow legal pad - above and beside part of a photo of a tabletop and a ball.
December 7, 2025 at 4:35 PM
brtom.bsky.social
Wendell Berry
SINCE, despite the stern demands of scientist and realist, we will always be supposing, let us suppose that Nature gave the world flowers and birdsong as a language, by which it might speak to discerning humans. And what must we say back? Not just thanks or praise, but acts of kindness bespeaking kinship with the creatures and with Nature, acts faithful as the woods that dwells in place time out of mind, self-denying as the parenthood of the birds, and like the flowers humble and beautiful. Wendell Berry Sabbath Poem VIII, 2012.
December 7, 2025 at 3:39 PM
brtom.bsky.social
Don't care much for winter, but it's part of the scene.
A snow-covered yard with leafless hydrangea stalks rising from a snowy mound, snow-covered stones, and a sizeable tree.
December 7, 2025 at 3:32 AM
brtom.bsky.social
Frank Gehry
A view of Frank Gehry's bandshell in Chicago's Millenium Park.
December 6, 2025 at 1:43 AM
brtom.bsky.social
View of a snow-covered backyard from above: snow around the edges of fishpond forming something like an amaretto bottle. There's snow in the old flowerpots that still contain spiky plants. Snow on the deck, snow on the bench beside the pond, snow on the distant air-conditioning units, snow on the branches of the barren maple tree, snow on the roof of the distant garage.
December 5, 2025 at 3:34 PM
brtom.bsky.social
So good ... all the cowboy stuff.
The cover of the novel Warlock by Oakley Hall, Introduction by Robert Stone (NYRB Books).
November 30, 2025 at 8:24 PM
brtom.bsky.social
Wendell Berry
ACROSS the distance he saw his granddaughter arriving at a meeting he was leaving. They called to each other in greeting and farewell, "I love you, Granddaddy." "I love you, too, honey," he called back, and it was his father's voice he heard uttered as his own, as from the distance behind him. And so he remembered again the ancient lineage of his love, given to him and again given, living backward, time beyond time, to the Love that called to itself the heaven and the earth. Wendell Berry Sabbath Poem II, 2016.
November 30, 2025 at 2:09 PM
brtom.bsky.social
Proof of Winter
View of a slightly curving snow-covered lawn out toward a lake. A point of land with a few trees stretches into the lake. More trees can be seen on the snowy hill of the opposite shore.
November 29, 2025 at 3:52 PM
brtom.bsky.social
Wendell Berry
WHATEVER happens, those who have learned to love one another have made their way to the lasting world and will not leave, whatever happens. Wendell Berry Sabbath Poem I, 1998.
November 23, 2025 at 1:17 PM
brtom.bsky.social
"Kind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet and salutes the sky. More of a success at it this time than most others it is. The feeling that the sky might be in the back of someone's mind. Then there is no telling how many there are." John Ashbery, from "For John Clare"
A nearly barren tree in darkness points up to a sky filled with puffy white clouds.
November 22, 2025 at 10:50 PM
brtom.bsky.social
A double exposure of trees—dark trunks, branches, and leaves in the lower section; lighter faded branches at the top.
November 21, 2025 at 3:24 PM
brtom.bsky.social
Black and white image of dried-up chrysantemum flowers.
November 18, 2025 at 9:43 PM
brtom.bsky.social
Perfect album that came out when I was sixteen ... but I only understood its perfection imperfeclty for some time.
November 17, 2025 at 1:45 AM
brtom.bsky.social
Wendell Berry
1. WE follow the dead to their graves, and our long love follows on beyond, crying to them, not "Come back!" but merely "Wait!" In waking thoughts, in dreams we follow after, calling, "Wait! Listen! I am older now. I know now how it was with you when you were old and I was only young. I am ready now to accompany you in your lonely fear." And they go on, one by one, as one by one we go as they have gone. 2. And yet we all are gathered in this leftover love, this longing become the measure of a joy all mourners know. An old man's mind is a graveyard where the dead arise. Wendell Berry Sabbath Poem X, 2000.
November 16, 2025 at 2:19 PM
brtom.bsky.social
The burning of sand dune overgrowth revealed the remnants of cacti I've never seen there. Looking forward to watching the revival in the spring.
Remains of cacti among burnt plants on a sand dune.
November 16, 2025 at 2:13 AM
brtom.bsky.social
Our Lake This Morning
Lake Michigan viewed from 63rd Street Beach, stretching out to the horizon under a cloudy sky.
November 15, 2025 at 4:58 PM
brtom.bsky.social
A fruitbowl with some apples, oranges, pears.
November 15, 2025 at 1:18 AM
brtom.bsky.social
The maple tree doesn't go without a final jumble.
A pond full of fallen maple leaves.
November 14, 2025 at 4:36 PM
brtom.bsky.social
Some fallen maple leaves, some snow, some rocks and netting.
November 13, 2025 at 2:43 AM
brtom.bsky.social
Don't care much for winter.
A view from above of a yard with snow-covered fishpond, flowerpots, deck, trees and yard.
November 10, 2025 at 5:03 PM
brtom.bsky.social
A field of brown wildflower plants looking out toward a large tree with yellow leaves.
November 9, 2025 at 7:53 PM
brtom.bsky.social
Two tree trunks and branches rise up through yellow leaves.
November 9, 2025 at 5:30 PM
brtom.bsky.social
Wendell Berry
For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living...' Luke 20:38 THE OLD DOG with her gray muzzle and I with my fringe of white hair please ourselves by nearness to the fire inside while outside the birds answer their calling to stay alive. We all now have fewer days than we had yesterday. But it comes to me that I know at last how all of us are held in the union, the communion, the assembly, the great membership of this world's life that comprehends its numberless becomings and farewells. In the Kingdom of God all who ever lived are living. Only we humans, we the poor, suffer the ancient mistake, dividing the living from the dead, confusing life with time. We divide life from death for the purpose of killing each other, killing ourselves, or we confuse living bodies with machines, the truly dead, to increase happiness and 'create wealth.' Hell fills the difference. The wrens, searching the brush for this day's food, rightly give not a thought to death, singing, as they live and move, the longest song. The Kingdom of God is life itself. Wendell Berry Sabbath Poem XIV, 2013.
November 9, 2025 at 1:59 PM