Overcast with no breeze, the four o’clock weather is cool. The temperatures are in the mid-fifties. Near where I stand leaning against one of the barren and trimmed trees that line Civic Center Plaza, the click-pound hammer of staple guns echo above the chants of the protesters. We gather for yet another march against the…
Category: Dear Diary
College Football: It Ain’t What It Used to Be
My uncle’s email titled YOUR PSU SCORECARD, listed which Penn State football players were staying, which ones were leaving, and which ones were transferring in from other schools. The transfer portal, in which kids can now switch schools every year without penalty (you used to have to sit out a year if you changed schools)…
Rain Rain Go Away
Monday morning Slanting rain streaks the windows. The magnolia tree shakes and waves in quick bursts of wind. A firetruck blares in the distance and then fades. Tuesday… Yesterday, we were in the middle of, or maybe at the end of, a weather event. It had been raining for the past three or four days…
Ending with a Whimper
Because the New Year arrives this week (which makes it sound more like a package from Amazon than the resetting of time and habits), I’ve been in “get my life together” and “get a jump on things” mode. I’m not usually one for resolutions. I believe change is a slow practice and can start on…
Walking Around Philly
The streets are narrow and crowded with parked cars. The skies are grey. A light mist falls. It’s cool but not cold. The color seems to have drained from the city as if everything has been coated in a thin film of charcoal. Philly has often been described a gritty city – both in terms…
Travel Anxiety?
Tonight I’ll take the red-eye to Philadelphia where I’ll see family over the holidays. Generally speaking, I don’t think of myself an an anxious person, but my morning – which has been one long and scattered wander around my apartment fidgeting with things and jumping from task to task – would suggest otherwise. Nervous energy….
Jumble of a Morning, Jumble of a Day
This morning, I woke from a dream in which a woman I was seeing said she was going to have lunch with friends in Philly. They changed plans and moved lunch to Sausalito and were then going to see a band I like who was playing a small outside venue there. It was late day…
Playlists and Contemplations in the Dark
Some nights, when I decide to stay in and cozy up with a glass of wine or a cup of tea, I like to sit in the low-light dark listening to music. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember. As a little kid in first or second grade, I used to fall…
Slow Plane Leaving
This morning, my poem “November Sky, Slow Plane Leaving” appeared in Stone Circle Review. Someone on Bluesky shared the poem and wrote, “Good morning to this expansive ache of a poem!” Briefly, the validation made me want to write, or edit, or submit other poems to other journals. Instead, unsure of where or how to…
Here and Now
Feeling slightly on the mend from a week-long battle with some serious sniffles, I woke in the 5am dark. I shuffled out to the kitchen where I made coffee and bacon and frozen waffles. After breakfast, I read, I wrote, I named and saved the half-dozen open documents on my computer. At 6:30, it’s still…
Feverish? Delusional?
Thursday. I woke up feeling like death. The cold I had been hoping was just a small case of the sniffles had blossomed. Headache, soreness, slight fever. I didn’t sleep well. For much of the night, I couldn’t breath. Despite feeling like crap, I opened the blinds and gave thanks for the sunshine before giving…
Thanksgiving 2025
Earlier in the week, I was feeling the feels of fall – which, for me, usually entails wistfulness for those times when I was coupled up. This happens every fall (cuffing season) and intensifies as the holidays approach. I spent the better part of a day writing about it and trying to understand why it…