In a December 1961 newsletter, Jeanette Hardage wrote that the highlight of the family’s year was a pack trip taken with two burros in the high Sierras the previous August. While I’m not sure all of the participants relished it as much as Jeanette did, …
Read MoreBeautiful Surrender
Jeanette Hardage anthropomorphizes nature in the poem below with its imagery of fog “conquering” a hill. As a frequent resident of coastal California, she had many opportunities to witness this phenomenon. She first wrote this in 1961, probably as a class assignment. She reworked it …
Read MoreI Have Known Rain
Some of Jeanette Hardage’s most powerful verses are those that dwell on painful subjects. She frequently employed nature as a metaphor in her poetry. In the poem below, published in Faith and Other Matters, she uses rain to express her heartfelt sadness, melancholy, even despair. …
Read MoreIn Love With the Sea
Owen Hardage started going to sea when he was just a young boy, making his first trip across the Pacific Ocean at the age of eight in 1934. As a young man, he served in the Navy during World War II, then later made a …
Read MoreMore Delights of Spring
The Hardages’ home in South Carolina backed up to a swamp which afforded them many hours of quiet enjoyment of nature. This photo by Jeanette Hardage captured at least two of the creatures that regularly visited that area, alligators and egrets. In the piece below, …
Read MoreSpring Rebirth
As spring bursts forth again, enjoy Jeanette Hardage’s poem below, originally entitled “April 10: For Doug,” which celebrates the growth, beauty, and hope of the season. She penned this sonnet in honor of her younger brother Doug, pictured here with a teenaged Jeanette along with …
Read MoreAutumn Leaves
In a Thanksgiving 2000 letter to family and friends, Jeanette Hardage first shared the poem below evoking the glory of autumn. She followed it with lines from a hymn by Matthias Claudius, “We Plow the Fields and Scatter,” which celebrates the changing seasons as good …
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