Sometimes the boat NEEDS to sink, little miss willpower. Sometimes it’s just time to release Her. Boats are practical things that keep you afloat on water, carry what you need for a journey, bring back what you harvest. They are all female. Boats are dreams, freedoms, passions, yearnings. They are shared, protected, obvious solitudes. In […]
To draw a line. A simple line can identify both home and trespasser. Political lines describe differences, places of meeting: here and there, you and me, us and them. Natural lines are always clear, but changing. Shoreline, treeline, river, snake, stick, shadow. Lines can protect the sacred, the private, the personal from the public. Open, […]
This spring term has been spine-cracking difficult, not just because of the workload but because of what it’s transforming in me – a requirement of fulfilling what has been assigned: Read the following ten books by next week; comment and engage in discussion online re same; define a research question and complete a lit review […]
A chickadee nests under the inside eave of the porch, which of course gentles the way I open and close my front door. I hope to make friends with this family so that the anxiousness at comings and goings subsides for all concerned. In any case, a new series of daily negotiations has begun. I consider […]
The red book records the odd. The black one, scars. The green, intent The blue, fancy The yellow is a large sieve to catch memory for story glue. but in a private, cathartic moment They will all burn. This is not a world that is kind to things sorted and filed in this way. In […]
If you’re not feeling nice, why act nicely? It just gives people the wrong impression. I like this. I’ve been taught something quite different from this idea. It’s only dawning on me now how niceness can distort. Being civil and considerate, acting with kindness – I get. There’s something clean and mutually respectful about those […]
We are what we imagine in ourselves. In this moment, though, my imagination is a dull grey. It trudges with jaw set to endurance mode. Wings furled behind dragging in the mud – too much damned effort to get off the ground. Is it me that’s too heavy, or the current …vicissitudes? My experiment in taking […]
I’m drinking beer in the solarium of a pub my band used to play in 35 years ago. More nachos than I can eat, hanging baskets full of boston-themed plastic plants, my old cello safe and warm beside me. A guy with humperdink-voice just started to play a three chord song – now I get why, […]
There’s a perfect stillness in this house. A resting of all the places that will later see activity, development, growth. I need this calm like a desert wanderer needs shelter and green; somehow my little house knows and holds me like a mother would, gentle and strong. What to say? Good lord and lady but […]
In the face of such continuous and appalling lack of integrity, what are the choices? Deeper roots will hold us all steady in our ground. Deeper roots will hold the ground steady. Shall we grow roots together?
Cold toes, bruised ribs from this wiry pull-out mattress, the roar and scrape of post-christmas industrial traffic three floors down. I keep my eyes closed and read last night’s snowfall from the speed of the passing plough: maybe two inches. A truck beeps itself backwards into the garage, shovels scrape pathways to retail: Not a snowday then; […]