Haley Heynderickx
I Need to Start a Garden

Writing songs by the handful as one picks grapes on the sly from the roadside.

Writing pearlescent songs of dew, morning-like yet warm.

Writing personal excerpts of an acoustic life, to the sound of the passing season.

This, the simple and crystalline Haley knows how to do well. All too well.

Sometimes melancholy, but with an end-of-summer melancholy, when you don't want to know what you're leaving behind and you can't know what you'll find.

Sometimes festive, a diviner of an insect's feelings, like a bumblebee settling on geraniums.

Sometimes, sometimes even disillusioned. But disarming, always. And familiar. Almost like the earth that remains under the nails.

Do you hear it? Among the sunflowers, a thread of trembling wind stirs.

Without even knowing how, Haley captures it and puts it into music.

Ah, if only I had a backyard! I might, perhaps, begin to cultivate a garden.

To unlearn like Haley.