Nantucket Essays

Books
Nantucket Essays

Books

• by Robert P. Barsanti • On this Sunday morning, the coffee is percolating, the coffee cake has been cut and tasted, and the newspaper is spread out over the table. Its various sections are weighed down by books. The house remains quiet. This is a house of bookcases.  They […]

Father's Day
Nantucket Essays

Father to Son

• by Robert P. Barsanti • At the Downyflake last weekend, I noticed that I took my coffee in the same way that my father did, regular with too much cream.  He drank his coffee every morning with the same slobbers of sugar and milk building up on the table […]

Cherry Blossom Corsage
Nantucket Essays

Hope & Cherry Tree

• by Robert P. Barsanti • The good news finally arrived this weekend.  It came over with a wedding party on a rocking ferry in a thick, thirty-degree fog on Friday.  We had prepared for more bad news this weekend; we lined up polar fleece, long pants, sweaters, and a […]

Forsythia
Nantucket Essays

Club for Boys

• by Robert P. Barsanti • Spring landed triumphantly last weekend.  The oaks and elms blazed kelly green against a deep blue sky.  The wetlands and swamps glowed green and white as the year made the turn into spring and carried us forward into another summer.  The Juice Bar has […]

Nantucket Essays

My Mother Carried Napkins

• by Robert P. Barsanti • I have just been invited to a fiftieth anniversary party for the Jordans.  The invitation arrived in a huge cream envelope with my name and address in script across the front.  It also arrived with a bachelorette party of bills from the car company, […]

Robert Barsanti Essay
Nantucket Essays

House

• by Robert P. Barsanti • Things are getting ready to happen out of sight. The world is sodden in April: the snow melts, the rain drips, the fog beads along the wires.  Blind white roots push out and break the frozen ground.  The daffodils have pushed through the dead […]

Nantucket Essays

Hope Dies in March on Nantucket

•   by Robert P. Barsanti   •   After the storm, we sat outside at the brewery.  Cribbage was being played, the dogs were scampering and the sky had more rain in it.  Heavy waves ground up the south shore and the overcast skittered. “He doesn’t talk to me.” “Why is that?” […]

Nantucket Essays

Middle-Aged Valentine

•   by Robert P. Barsanti   •   By now, most of the snow has melted.  Frozen, dirty, icy clumps and ridges remain hidden deep in the brown thicket of dead vines and holly bushes out back, but the rest of the snow disappeared in a warm rain.  Even snow forts built […]

Nantucket January
Nantucket Essays

Living the Dream

•   by Robert P. Barsanti   •   They were out there on New Year’s Day.  Four white boats lined up near the eastern jetty, pulling scallops out of the water.  Two men worked in each boat.  They aimed the nose of the boat into the incoming tide and worked the winches.  […]