Category Archives: Uncategorized

Mellifluous isn’t on one list, though it is on others.Because it rolls over the tongue so smoothly,it should be highly caloric. But tremulous is, which makes me quiver saying it, andluminous shining its bright self, as well asdiaphanous. All these … Continue reading →

As we assemble our star in the heavenswith every good deed, the smallestbits of kindness deposited like seeds along the paths of others, I findmyself considering how I mightfurnish that star before I get there, what color I’d like it … Continue reading →

As a kid, I used to feel my hopeful heartlift when I’d see the red flap hanging, the one Dad installed below our mailboxon its sturdy post across the street. That meant the mail lady had come,as we called our … Continue reading →

(Lake Tahoe, west shore) Red hammockunder tall Jeffrey pinesset against bluest blue, I eye a soaring specimenthat divides in twoforty feet up. Like us, one trunk,two offshoots,still reaching for sky—evenas we add morerings to our core, around ourincreasing middles,surprisingly strong … Continue reading →

As I type with my eyes closed, as I often do, I think of my favorite high school teacher who made me type and retype student reporters’ stories onto clean, half sheets of newsprint. In the mid-1970s I was the … Continue reading →

(Lake Tahoe, west shore,in memory of Margery Thompson) Five days after you die,we head to the Big Blue,the high mountain lakewhere all manner ofspirits live, and now,we imagine, you havejoined them. The Wa-She-Shu,the ancestral people,migrated here eachsummer from the hotCarson … Continue reading →

(for Rebecca) Once again, after the quietexplosion of death, the presence of the belovedpersists, as companion spirits do, lingering in the present tensenear those who cherish them. We cannot yet think in the “was,”as we sink into the after-space that … Continue reading →

(Lake Tahoe, west shore) On the second day at the lakea storm warning and propheticgraying skies, rimmed by a hintof light over the mountainsto the east. Sure enough, about mid-afternoon,I walk to the same spot overlookingthe beach, where yesterday beamedwith … Continue reading →

(Lake Tahoe, west shore,Labor Day 2025) You are here—me, too—by the Big Blue that is so cold…(how cold is it?).I remember two little girls who grewup next to what theyconsidered “their” lake, who were longago brought to thisginormous one situated … Continue reading →

That, when I bent over and kissed her cheek as she lay on the sofa—the spot from which she would not rise the next morning—I didn’t say, aloha nui loa, mahalo nui loa—much love, many thanks. That I didn’t say … Continue reading →