Politics is a filthy sponge. Do you want it in your sink? Do you want it in your mind? Yesterday evening, after two warm days, a cleansing ocean wind rushed into the valley once again. This morning the air is sweet and still. And I sense something else, which makes me say these words aloud: autumnal understanding. If I do not return your wave, is the loss not mine? For […]
How stirring, the seagulls’ cries from the Claggett Creek wetlands behind the houses facing north along Verda Lane. I heard their voices several times yesterday, both morning and afternoon, borne, like the scent of home-cooking, on the southwest breeze. Add to this, winging toward them at dawn, the great blue heron, silent, generally alone, though occasionally in the spacious company of another of its kind. I can almost see the […]
If this is a perfect world, then I,
being part of this world, am perfect too.
If this is not a perfect world,
then I must be an imperfect judge.
If this world is a ball of light in a reader’s hand,
or a pound of fine chocolate,
then I am a sweetly rising sun,
an intensely living man.
Canvas 958 — July 8, 2017
It is the season of tiny spiders, when it’s nearly impossible to pass through the yard without walking into their webs and finding them in my hair and beard. Those I notice, I help out onto a nearby leaf so they can continue about their business. Those I don’t, crawl out later on their own, or I comb them into the bathroom sink. A few days ago, one crawled from […]
I use words to show none are needed. And I smile. “Brevity Loves Company” Recently Banned Literature, February 4, 2018 Brevity As each petal is wise in the purpose and symmetry of a flower, so must be the words we choose, each an action with a will to bloom. Be brave, be brief, beware the power you wield; thoughtless use is profound abuse. Brevity is depth of character, the […]
Two years — since then, who knows how many times I’ve seen her grown children looking for worms in the wet grass after a rain. “Is that the man? Do you remember what Mama said?” “Yes. She said, You don’t have to be afraid of him.” All of This the nights are growing longer and the robin watching from her nest in the fig tree leaves fall in a […]
bumblebee across your path child laughing in the bath so ends the war just like that “Just Like That” Recently Banned Literature, April 30, 2016 The Fifth of July And here are the solemn graves of all the braves afraid of love and peace.
You are not happy. You want nothing more than to be happy. You are willing, even, to think you are happy, and to tell everyone how happy you are, even if you are not happy. But doing so makes you sad, and it saddens those whom you tell. Thinking you are happy, you are not happy. You are sad. You are sad, until, one day, a miracle happens, and you […]
Do I see what I think I see and hear what I think I hear, or are these towhees my thoughts, suddenly taking form and substance? The friendly birds arrive from nowhere while I’m watering the geraniums. Just a few feet away, the male hops from the moss into the birdbath and starts splashing; the female sings from the birch above. And what of the geraniums themselves, and the moss, […]
A soft lead pencil, a fingertip — the brush a mind,
the mind a memory, memory a fallen flower.
Canvas 565 — June 28, 2015
