• acceptance speech

    I’ve got more thoughts running through my head than I can get organized into anything coherent tonight and so I offer this wonderful poem I found today at The Writer’s Almanac. The poet is Lynn Powell. Acceptance Speech The radio’s replaying last night’s winnersand the gratitude of the glamorous,everyone thanking everybody for making everythingso possible,…

  • unbreaking the circle

    Back in the early nineties, the town of Waxahachie, Texas almost became famous for something other than the fact that my grandmother lives there. It was to have been the home of the Superconducting Super Collider, a fifty-four mile underground oval where super charged protons would be sent around in opposite directions and then collided…

  • reuben

    My father-in-law is in the middle stages of Alzheimer’s disease. He and my mother-in-law left yesterday after an extended stay with us. ReubenLeah knew she was unloveduntil she held the boy,her firstborn,and she named him Reuben:“See, a son,” it means;a love carrier —“Because God has seenmy misery.”The Reuben I know is a twin,next to last…

  • free fall

    in the moment betweenthe orchestra tuning andthe curtain going uplies a space big enoughto hold our expectations in the last moment beforethe wheels touchdownand grab the runwayas we catch our breathand let go of our fear in that one moment beforebeginning — when we knowwhat’s coming but not hereyet – that one momentfull of waiting…

  • enough

    I have a job interview tomorrow. Last Saturday I made a cold call on a restaurant that happens to be across the parking lot from the Unemployment Office (excuse me – the Career Center). It’s a funky little place with a really cool menu that runs ads on cable from time to time. As I…