Category Archives: Uncategorized

I step out the back door a bit beforemidnight, walking into the darkcarrying the small basket of cardboardand paper bits bound for the recycling binoutside the gate when it hits me: the sweet, musky scent of paperwhitesblooming their tiny heads … Continue reading →

Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace. —Howard Thurmanphilosopher, theologian, Civil Rights leader1899–1981 ••• How quickly we forget the … Continue reading →

Leave a messagefor whoever is coming next.Even if nobody is coming next. —Elizabeth Gilbert ••• Like the imprisoned man whoimpressed mugshots printedin newspapers onto small barsof soap, then hid them betweenplaying cards. Or internees during World War II,imprisoned for their … Continue reading →

I stand at the kitchen counter holding a pair of slender hickory drumsticks I haven’t used in four-plus decades. My 35-year-old nephew, a middle school band director, has told me that no one holds drumsticks the way I was taught—the … Continue reading →

It always looks darker when the new moon risesbecause from where we sit, we cannot see the sunilluminating the far side of our nearest neighbor. And on this new moon night before the dayhonoring one who gave his life on … Continue reading →

Driving home tonightthrough cataracts of gauzy air that have curtained themselvesall the way to the ground, the long ago returnsin soft focus— driving an hour home onnarrow levee roads winding through the darkafter lying in his arms for hours, barely … Continue reading →

(In memory of Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaii,1838–1917, on the 133rd anniversary ofthe overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom) ••• It is not the first time that the countryI think of as mine has muscled its wayinto another and bent unwillingpeople to … Continue reading →

I’m pretty sure the headline meantthe body, with an image of a womanwith leg in the air, actuallystretching. But my mind went to trees lengtheningtheir long spines toward the light,bending as necessary, or perhapsby desire, and I thought again how … Continue reading →

Though some folks with a wickedsense of humor decided to nametheir stretch of Arizona desert Nothing, and though today on someone’shumorous calendar has been dubbedNothing Day, I can’t designate even one of the increasingly fewer daysthat lie before me as … Continue reading →

Seven years after,I can’t count how manytimes I look at you in a moment of fleetingirritation, when the blueof your eyes shimmers just so, as it did whenthey blinked openthe day I lost you, and you returnedthanks to the help … Continue reading →