A Careful Scattering

Each year for the forty-two Christmases of our married life my wife Louise Hassel Burnham illustrated the poems I wrote to celebrate the festival season of the years' ending and beginning the Solstice Christmas and New Year. Her illustrations were in a variety of media: line drawings block prints (both wood and vegetable) collage and paint. Many of the drawings represent views of our house in Newton Massachusetts including such details as the front door a mirror in the hall the fireplace. Others include the names and places of family and friends woven into trees. Louise's final card from 2001 is a gathering up of many earlier cards. While the original intent of these cards was to celebrate a single year together they sum up our lives over four decades. We discussed their publication before her death and it was she who chose the title A Careful Scattering. In their publication I want to remember our partnership and to dedicate this book to her memory with love.