The book I started on my ride to New York this morning was Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry by Donald Hall. A couple of pages in, I found this sentence: Their house was always dark: it felt like held breath. (5) The sentence stayed with me. When I sat down…
Today was one of those days that didn’t have much on the schedule going into it, and yet was filled with unexpected moments I felt I had prepared for, somehow, which sent me back to a fragment of a poem I had hung on to, which I ended up finishing this way. Mis en place is…
limited view Somewhere in the soundtrack of my life these words broke in: “the things we are bounded by make us capable of excellence.” Not bound like a prisoner— shackled—but bounded, perhaps even boundaried: put the rails up on the lane and we all throw more strikes. Freedom, at its finest is more than being…
It’s a little after sunrise, an early autumn morning— a chill of hope in the air; the sunrise is the color of stories. Today is your birthday. I’m still keeping count though you are no longer celebrating: eighty-eight. I live in a house you never visited, in a town you never saw; I have a…
I have been quiet for a long time, I know. One of these things I learned about myself is I grew weary of feeling I needed to respond to the issues of the day—and by “needed” I mean allowing myself the luxury of thinking I had something that had to be said. I stay somewhat…
I spent the day in the yard installing the arbor and planting the climbing roses I got Ginger for her birthday. As I sat in the back yard, resting before finishing dinner, I thought of a poem I wrote as we settled into the house on Trinity, preparing for Ginger’s parents to move in with us….
the end of poetry month also marks the end of a poet a protester a prophet a priest those are not often captured in one person he was already in his forties when I learned who he was a pastor asking questions that didn’t come up in most baptist circles by the time I was…
muscle memory dishwashing always needs a soundtrack so I let my phone play deejay and the next thing I knew I was chewing on a piece of grass walking down the road even though we ain’t go money there’s a place in the world for a gambler so dance with me ‘cause oz never did…
nature walk a few days ago we started our twenty-seventh year following the path among the stones along the shore until stopped by the barrier set to protect the nesting plovers today we spent a sunny afternoon walking down to our little harbor and then back down unfamiliar streets past people in unprotected neighborhoods as they nested…
penultimate it was the night before though I suppose I could say it was the last night but that is not how I’ve ever thought of it nothing was ending everything was beginning we gathered everyone we could think of in the fellowship hall to tell stories eat barbecue and mark the moment nothing was…