there are days I lay awakeat night and wonder even worry about what’s to comebecause the future feels like a past due account and I have already spent my timethinking about tomorrowputting the tense in present there are nights like thiswhen I fall asleep holding on to the day like the last bite of the…

If I still lived in BostonI would see spring bloomsinside — at the Flower Show –here in Carolina the daffodilsare well into their paradethe peach tree has budded . . .I like the feel of the sunon my neck and, yes, I missthe prospect of snow onEaster Sunday Morningfollowed by the flowersCreation’s resonance toGod’s emphatic…

On February 5, 1989, I took Ginger to see Lyle Lovett at the Caravan of Dreams in downtown Fort Worth. The club was small and we sat on the front row. Tonight, I took Ginger to see Lyle Lovett for the twenty-third time in our twenty-three years together – and we sat on the front…

“Study the faces of the new tyrants,” Berger says has he begins the last section of his book, Bento’s Sketchbook: How Does the Impulse to Draw Something Begin? What follows is a series of incisive descriptions: They are impeccably dressed and their tailoring is reassuring, like the silhouette of high-security delivery vans. They have foreheads…

One of the writers who has befriended me through her words is Naomi Shihab Nye. We have never met, though I imagine being in San Antonio sometime and knocking on her door as though we are both used to my doing that and having her answer and inviting me in for tamales and poetry. One…

Not long after we moved into our school building last year, Borders went broke and sold everything in their stores including the fixtures. The tables in my room are the very ones that held stacks of books for customers’ perusal and my walls are lined with the book shelves that made corridors of what are…

Durham is the most encouraging place I have ever lived. This is a city full of people who pull for each other, which is good because it’s also a city full of people with dreams and things they want to see happen. In our town of about a quarter of a million people we had…

sometime in the night I will be robbed of an hour of sleep in order that we might save daylight the thieves will leave nothing butthe promise the hour will be savedkept safely and returned in the fall still — what if this was the nightI was to sleep deep enough to wake truly rested…

A couple of nights ago, I posted what has come to be known as the Kony 2012 Video as my blog post. I learned of it through my eleventh graders. One of them was in a documentary studies class I taught last year in which we watched “Ghosts of Rwanda,” a Frontline piece looking at…

“The difference betweenjoy and despair,” she said,“has little to do with circumstances and everything to do withwhat you choose to see.” “You’re making that up,”he replied. She took his facebetween her handsand stared into his eyesas if they held galaxies.“I love you,” she said,“with all of my heart.” And he believed her. Peace,Milton