Author Archives: janishaag

With my poet friend en routeto her reading on Long Islandinto the bowels of the renovatededifice looking nothing likethe original Penn Station withits 84 soaring Doric columns, itsconcourse covered by magnificentglass domes, an architecturalmarvel demolished six decadesago, more recently slingshot’dinto … Continue reading →

I’ve long admired street poets who set up a table with pens and paper (sometimes a typewriter) on a sidewalk or other outdoor space and write an on-the-spot poem for people passing by. On this trip to New York I’m … Continue reading →

(In memory of the Stonewall Uprising, June 28, 1969) The tiny triangle of a parkcatches my eye as the yellow taxiwhisks me back to where I began—three days in, and I’m taxiing likea New Yorker. The fluttering rainbows makeme want … Continue reading →

Spray painted on the back of signsindicating construction onWaverly Place, down the blockfrom Washington Square Park, Say “I love you,” where yesterday a host of humanitycarried other kinds of signsprotesting unfairness, brutalityin a far-away place. This morning Mary and I … Continue reading →

(for Georgann) Yeah, I retired that license platewhen I donated the car to the publicradio station some years back, and Dick removed the platesfor me because I wasn’t lettingthose go, seeing as how you claimed them as your firstpublished piece … Continue reading →

Because I’d never seen one before,never unpeeled the thin-skinned bulband pried out a half moon of garlic, I had no idea what the fit-in-your-handcontraption was. But it came with himand the creaky red overstuffed rocker that had belonged to his … Continue reading →

(for SML) My horoscope for the weekadvised: Be on the lookout formeaningful coincidences. Synchronicities are coming!You have entered the More-Than-Mere-Coincidence Zone. Or, as my late friend Julieliked to say, Honey, thereare no accidents. So it was that, driving upthe hill … Continue reading →

Leave everything undefined, including yourself. Befriend uncertainty. Fall in love with mystery. Kneel at the altar of Not Knowing. Give your questions time to breathe, and the answers will find you. — Jeff Foster ••• Without form, you float with … Continue reading →

Early evening patter on the roofmorphs into an insistent shower —what ho? rain?—yes, rain now— followed by equally emphatic sunblazing in the west, illuminating the wall of cranky clouds that hasmoved on, heading east, as am I in the car, … Continue reading →

Because it seems that cold weathermight finally be done with us, because spring is springing withits always surprising abandon, tossing frilly blooms around likeso many enthusiastic pom-poms, I decide that the plants that havesheltered all winter on the front porch … Continue reading →