chowder head I think coincidence and soup are synonyms both words mean to fall together it started with bacon that’s when I knew we were having chowder for supper I found potatoes and chopped clams even as I grabbed items as though I was gathering props for improv giving myself options I couldn’t see yet…
live and learn “the only way to learn is to live” the words came from a fictional librarian who lives in a story about consequences an old word that means what comes next after whatever we said or did or didn’t do which we can’t see until we live through it and that makes me…
One of our favorite Christmas traditions is watching—no, rewatching—movies. We have several that we need to see at some point during the holidays to make the season feel complete: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” of course; “Christmas in Connecticut” with Barbara Stanwyck; “The Preacher’s Wife” with Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston; Bill Murray’s take on “A…
coffee shop duet what I saw first was her solitude as she sat on the bar stool matching the expression of the coffee shop’s blank wall but when he entered she turned and so did the light around her they greeted like good friends talking as they shuffled coats to make room for themselves he…
I could hear rain in mid-December days die incrementally losing light almost from the crack of dawn suffocate them with a blanket of clouds and the only light that lives is artificial still light is not life or so I was reminded when I realized I could hear the rain not just the storm but…
interstices the space between trees the crack in the mortar the time between floors if we took away the spaces between us among us the universe would collapse into a fist the rest between notes the breath before words the pause to ponder intervening emptinesses waiting to be noticed to be seen as something other…
ritual in search of significance the last thing I do before I go to bed is to disconnect my implant and hearing aid and enter into quietness it is necessary action because both my batteries and my body need to recharge so I settle into silence each device has a cradle where it rests for…
The woman in my poem from a couple of nights ago made it into my sermon today. She has still been on my mind. ___________________________ Sometimes when I look at the lectionary passages I wonder about the committee that put it together. I learned this week that the Common Lectionary for Protestant churches only came…
breakfast potatoes in our favorite breakfast joint on the way home from the hospital for the first time in a long time I heard the sound of one chef chopping the rhythm of the knife beating in my new ear a sound my brain knows by heart when I caught his eye I asked, “making…
fear factor it was not long after the third doctor came by to tell me it would be another hour until I was taken back to the operating room that the woman in the next cubicle began to assert herself “I want to leave” a sentiment shared on almost every stretcher but she was serious…