They approached him as if his mind were a cactus, when it was really a colorful old bus on its way through the desert. “A Sad Mistake” Songs and Letters, January 7, 2008 Night I picture a man with a typewriter in his lap, sitting on an old wooden chair beside a rusted mailbox, a field of wildflowers behind him. There is paper in the typewriter. Looking down from […]
Diary To be an autumn leaf pressed between the pages of a lover’s notebook and hear her say “He must be gray by now.” Songs and Letters, September 20, 2008
I have not been myself lately, said the wind. Nor I, said the mountain. The shepherd boy, who had been listening, took up his flute. When he was an old man, he put it down again and died. And the wind rushed, and the mountain blushed, to the depths of the canyon. Nothing I said to my mother, I said to my father, “I have nothing to do.” To […]
Are we really separated by physical distance, or are the mountains and miles just our changing moods and expressions? I see you across the room — the rocky coast, the foam: you are a lighthouse looking on the blind wreckage, on the longing, the love. And it is but one step to the opposite shore, to dusty flowers and innocent graveyards. What shall we make of it? Shall we go […]
Canvas 287 — March 4, 2011
The Pond
I see faces floating
on the pond:
which, today,
will be my own?
Rain arrives
before the answer:
the pond grows
and grows.
Songs and Letters, December 28, 2006
Another Song I Know, Cosmopsis Books, 2007
The weather term wintry mix makes me think of a salad without cucumbers and tomatoes, with carrots and cabbage and kale and lettuce of various curls and crinkles and hues, and perhaps an orange slice or two. On the street, though, with the wind in my face while climbing the hill, I’m not met by tangy vegetables and apple cider vinegar, but with rain and ice and snow. Clumps and […]
And if the sky is a well, and a well is the mind,
then perhaps thirst is the flight of our kind.
Child Flight — September 24, 2015
It might be said that those who laugh at beginners are afraid to begin themselves. But this fear is also a beginning. It might be said that those who rush to lavish praise on masters of their respective callings and crafts, are not aware that these same masters understand that in the face of so much beauty and immensity they are beginners still, and feel this is natural. It might […]
In the ground a year now, our little apricot tree has seen its share of weather. From its simple beginning as a stick in the mud with a few roots to hold it down, it made good progress during its first summer, and, growing late into the fall, it needed several frosts to persuade it to let go of its yellowed leaves. Then came rain, hail, and snow. It has […]
More rain, more snow, now Goose Lake overflows. The muddy water rushes across the main road that leads deeper into the park. It joins the next lake, which has swollen to the foot of the historic black cottonwood. Where the water broadens, an icy wind appears to move it in the opposite direction. The path is frozen. Between patches of snow, the muddy ground is stiff and easy to walk […]
