These are the words with which my day began: Only a daredevil makes metaphors. To make a metaphor is to walk a tightrope, to be shot out of a cannon, to do aerial somersaults without a net. The trouble with metaphors is that you never know when they’ll let you down. You turn a somersault…

Who would think a single motioncould carry multiple meanings.I spend my days stirring the soup,measuring out the corn meal,making sure everyone eats well;it is good and honest work. Tonight I stood over the soupin the warm light of our kitchen,carried by the scent of cornbreadin the oven, the scuttle of schnauzersat my feet, pouring more…

Time is a living thing. We talk about it as something that ticks by or slips away, something we make or take or keep or lose, but it is a force, a dimension, an entity on its own terms. Though we often talk about telling time, we do better to listen to what it is…

James sings Joni. Peace,Milton

I first found Chet Raymo in the Science section of the Boston Globe where he wrote a weekly column. I was neither an ornithologist nor an astronomer, but he talked of birds and stars in a way that fed both my curiosity and my faith: he made me think I could understand what he was…

Some time during the evening on Saturday I first noticed the little wisp that floated into my vision. It looks like a pen and ink drawing of a cloud, or a thin line of black smoke, except it has a certain bounce to it, based on my blinking, that makes it do a little dance…

I’m not sure the first time that it happened; over twenty years, I’ve lost count of how many times we have repeated the scene. Ginger always begins the conversation, and the statement generally comes out of nowhere: “OK,” she’ll say, “name three reasons you love me.” And I name three specific things – three the-way-you-wear-your-hat…

the more I hear the story the more I think of youthe young girl who tookthe weight of graceand carried it to termalong with the secretsand accompanying slander my four weeks of waitingare a failing facsimile ofpregnancy and preparationand I know who the boybecame while you wereleft to grow up as well some make you…

Each day is a little life, and each life is rounded with a little dark. (Chet Raymo, 41) little lives I was born this morninginto a world of possibilitieswrapped, first, in the wonderof a BLT and egg sandwich(yes, God is good)and the kind of conversationamong friends that defineswhat friends are to oneanother: the ones who…

I had a couple of errands to run before I went to work this morning, both related to my in-laws coming to visit this coming week. The first was to take our recliner to get the springs on the bottom reattached; for whatever reason, they had chosen to let go over the past couple of…