Fifty years ago, when my father went to visit a farm neighbor dying of cancer, he heard him howling with pain the moment he entered our little hometown hospital. I was born in that hospital. When we were in high school, a close friend of mine died in that hospital. Three of our four children were born in that hospital. In that hospital, my appendix was removed. My wife worked […]
If I were planning to be away from home for a long time, I would close the doors and windows, make sure the lights and stove were off, and stop delivery of the mail. I would not plant anything that needed water or attention to survive. It strikes me, though, that with this journal and writing space and place for drawings, I’m doing just the opposite. Expecting to be called […]
There is still the funny little matter of what to save and what to throw out. This question comes up every few weeks or years, when the urge arises to gut entire closets with their stacks of storage tubs half-buried in all manner of curious debris — papers, crayons, lamps, fried or obsolete electronics — even old decorative pillows long past their presentable lifetimes. Some decisions are easy. For instance, […]
Am I serious, or joking? Do I ask this in fun, or do I really not know? Am I neither? Am I both? Laughter comes from a deep well. Tears are melted snow. Smile at my funeral, smile when I go. And smile at this grave fool’s work I do, especially so, especially so. One More for Finnegan It’s one more for Finnegan, Then we go on home. Michael […]
As I see it, when I remember something, a new version of the past is created, which, however much like the previous versions, is subtly altered by the very act of recall, along with whatever else has happened or not happened since the original was first made and lived. This is why, when I am suddenly confronted with hard evidence from bygone years, I will sometimes go into a kind […]
Not far east of here, at the corner, across the street from the first stop sign, between two houses, there are two large redwoods. Last night, approaching them in the dark where they stand solemnly together, whispering, touching, knowing each other by their intermingled roots, I heard an owl calling from the tree behind in dread-multiple whooos; this was followed by a wild, eerie cry, which sounded like the lost […]
And if this is a death bed edition, how is it that the bed is piled high with papers and books, leaving no room for the body? And how is that, when I hold up my hand, it seems less flesh than daylight? Death and the Scribe Old though he was, Death hadn’t the heart to take him, The diligent, muttering scribe. Already, the world had forgotten him, His […]
Faulty grammar aside, there’s more here than meets the I. But Emily Dickinson? What made me think of her? For Emily If the past is a flower, and has its seasons and dies, what of the seeds it leaves behind? and what of you, and I, dear butterfly?
