Category Archives: Uncategorized

Fully here

I want to be fully here. Tonight I will sleepbetween two streams of water, under stars that movefrom what I don’t know to what I don’t know. —Pat Schneider from “If I Were God” in “The Patience of Ordinary Things” … Continue reading

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How to be

for Lauren and Gerald, now joined by Henry He should have arrived witha list clutched in his tiny fist,an instruction manual for thisnew human, specifically tailoredfor his particular self. But no. They don’t send themwith one. I don’t know why.Like … Continue reading

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How to love someone back to life

First, you can’t.You can try. But you can’t. They have to want to return,and if they have lost the gleam in the eye,the impetus to continue, the breath,you have to know that all the urging,the pleading, the desperationwill not help. … Continue reading

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Atta girl

I say to Poki, when she beginsto eat again after a week of languishing,when I wondered daily if she wason her way out, watching, because if she wastruly dying, she didn’t seem to bein pain—just wanted to sleep,tolerated occasional gentle … Continue reading

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World Typewriter Day

June 23, the anniversary of the day in 1868 when a patent was granted for the first practical typewriter to a trio of inventors, including Christopher Latham Sholes, a Wisconsin newspaper editor who designed the QWERTY keyboard. ••• Around here … Continue reading

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Show-off

She’s visible on the longest day,Venus a bright white jewelwinking in summer-blue sky, a pearl earring that requiresus to squint in a what-is-that?daytime moment. And once the sun reluctantlysteps offstage, that show-offVenus really beams in the spotlight, obscuringtiny Mars shining … Continue reading

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How to celebrate the first day of summer

when it’s so un-summery, a mild85 degrees at most, with a soft breeze,the sky still blue, no smoke or smogdarkening it, the thermometer kindlyhovering far below the century mark. In fact, we’ve not yet seen 100 degrees,something I shouldn’t even … Continue reading

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Solstice

Pretend there’s a cup of water on the dashboard,said the former ambulance driver,and you must drive so carefully, so gently,that you don’t spill a drop. I tried with everything in meafter his surgery to make the drive homeas gentle as … Continue reading

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there is another country inside you

for the brave and beautiful writers who write with me a rough untamed onewhere wildness roams& daring rambleswhere nothingis trimmedor clippedto impossibleperfection where you dancewith abandonsing loudlybecause you can where there isno commandto color inside the linesstay in the boxpunctuate … Continue reading

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Drops

for Curtis It’s not that I’ll be 65 next month,or that I’ve had to wade throughthe confusion of Medicare, butthe long-loved optometristsaying, I’m pulling the trigger— something we’ve talked aboutfor years—writing the prescriptionfor drops that, she promises, willplump up my … Continue reading

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