Dad and I sat at breakfast yesterday and talked about the old hymns that fed our hope and faith in these days. This is the one I have been singing tonight, though not quite David Phelps. O Love that wilt not let me go,I rest my weary soul in thee;I give thee back the life…

it’s not what you know it’s what you don’t knowor what you’ll ever figure outthat takes you out where the wild things grow and makes you wonder what you’ll have to showfor all the days of being devoutit’s not what you know it’s what you don’t know that hints at what grace can bestowas love…

I have a love-loathe relationship with much of the technology that gets thrown at us. I love my laptop and I wish the manufacturers had chosen to make sure they were making a great mobile phone before they added all the un-phone features to it. And I don’t really get the whole Twitter thing. Those…

it’s not the same you know waiting in linewaiting for the phone to ringwaiting (waiting) for the world to change tonight I am not passing timeor fostering impatienceI am waiting for newsNo – I am weighting for newstime is not passingtime is falling in layerseach one heavier than the lasteach one heavy with hopeand uncertainty…

Tonight was a night to remember in the kitchen because nothing really happened. And it was a night I learned from my coworkers. I shared the evening with Mitch, our line cook (and among the best read line cooks with whom I’ve had the privilege of working), and Arnaldo, our dish washer (whom I have…

In the fall of 2000, my friend Jack and I drove from Boston to Stanhope, New Jersey for the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. It was one of my favorite experiences, and I was reminded of it when I came across the poster I bought (and never framed) cleaning up our office/studio here in Durham….

It’s not often I quote something without a post to go with it, but time is short today and this is worth passing along. From Pedro Arrupe: Nothing is more practical than finding God,that is, than falling in lovein a quite absolute, final way What you are in love with,what seizes your imagination,will affect everything.It…

the word holds it’s own imagephoto (light) – graphy (writing)rays as old as the universecaptured on paper, lookinglike you and me one pastafternoon, another at sunset,and on through the stack of time that stays in the oldshoebox, waiting to be seenagain, to let the years’ lightcatch up like stars we canfinally see, the click of…

When I taught in the Boston Public Schools, one of my colleagues who became a friend was a man named Ed, who was a good eight inches taller than I was, in much better shape, and always had on a coat and tie. He is also African-American He told me a story of driving his…

I have been in poetry mode all this week, so it seems only fitting that I should discover, here in the dregs of this day, that today is W. S. Merwin’s birthday. In honor of his celebrating another year on the planet, I offer two or three of his poems. The first two I found…