I’m off to Hartford on our church’s youth mission trip and will be back on Thursday. I don’t know how often I will get to post in the days ahead, but I’ll do my best. Peace,Milton

Since I grew up in Africa, one of the American phenomena I have struggled to understand is the Yard Sale. In Nairobi or Lusaka, the thought of selling stuff we were no longer using made no sense; we gave it away to any number of folks around us who needed it and more. We weren’t…

when darkness falls outsideand inside at the endof a pretty good dayI have turned on the musicI know – songs that havelighted many nightswith the slide of fingersalong steel stringsfingers picking a patternof sorrow and sadnessas comforting as the wind and as old as my childhoodafternoons spent sittingin the grass trying to makemy fingers move…

Summer arrives in a few minutesannounced only by the estival breezesand the clacking of the woodenblinds in our room. The sun filledthe room with light just after fivethis morning and won’t retreatuntil nearly ten. This is the longest day. Somewhere around ten I watchedthe taillights of the Wrangerdisappear around the corneras you left for a…

This has been one of those weeks where Ginger’s schedule and mine leave us feeling as though we live in different time zones, so I rode with her to her meeting on the other side of Boston just so we could have time in the car together both going and coming back. While she went…

Summer has finally made it’s way here: the day is clear and we’re going to hit 80. (I realize that’s spring for you Texas folks.) Since I wrote about “Angel from Montgomery,” I’ve had songs on my mind and have now spent the better part of the morning perusing Youtube to see what I can…

Since I started blogging about eighteen months ago I’ve passed on most of the memes that have come my way (OK, all of the memes) mostly because I use this forum to work on my writing. This week, however, I’ve been tagged several times for the “Eight Random Things” meme and it’s Saturday morning and…

once in seventh grade I think our teacher gave us a page of words without punctuation or capital letters and we had to figure out where the sentences were and how to make sense of the words the words could be divided up in more ways than one sort of like how my life feels…

an abandoned housefalls down from neglectit’s trueI’ve seen it happenloneliness rots the woodemptiness eats awaythe foundationlike a termite keep a househabitated and it won’twear outas long as there arefeet on the floorvoices in the hallreasons tostay home the one who firstdrove nails into wood atour addresscouldn’t have knownwe would paintthe kitchen floorblue with purplepuppy paws…

that would be a good titlefor your book about depressionshe said, as if it were somethingI could come home and putinto words that could one daybe pulled from the shelf she knows I have it in memy darkness has ebbedand flowed like the tideseach season sometimes quietsometimes lashing againstthe sea wall throwing stones when we…