It’s 11:00 pm on a Tuesday night in August. The temperatures feel like early fall and the windows are open. From the kitchen I can hear the hum of the refrigerator, but mostly I hear the outside chorus of crickets and katydids and the occasional car passing by. Earlier tonight I sat on the deck…
Category: Life
Birthday 2022
Today is my birthday. While not there yet, I’m inching closer to one of the big ones – fifty. Sometimes, my age catches me by surprise. In some respects, I still feel like a kid or like I’m stuck in this early adult phase of life (like I’m in my 20s or 30s)… Maybe it’s…
The Affair
The other morning, instead of scrolling Twitter and Facebook and reading the news – or more accurately, doing less of those things – I spent my time revising poems and researching the submission guidelines of a few journals. I still didn’t hit submit, but this was a step. I have continued to add to my…
Becoming Disequipped
At some point in the day, almost every day, I sit at my computer and think I should write a poem. Except it never works that way. I suppose “never” is an exaggeration…. it just seems like if I sit down with the intention of writing a poem, I sit there and stare. One writer/teacher…
Beach Day in the Afterlife
I spent this past weekend at the beach. I love being near the ocean. I like walking near water. I think differently when I’m near the water. It was a nice, but all too short, getaway. I snapped a decent picture on Sunday morning before the beach was crowded – when the only people on…
The View from Out Here
Being sick got the best of me these past few days. On Sunday, I wrote that I should do some chores and send some poems out for publication. I managed to find the dead mouse, throw some things away, and run the vacuum. By the time I was done, I was in a cold sweat…
The Long and Short of My Tiny Anxieties
I get anxious about things. Not super anxious, but anxious. I get anxious about going to new places or not being on time. I get anxious about leaving. I get anxious about trying things I haven’t done before or things I’m not good at (dancing, golf, roller skating) – especially if people are watching. I…
Unsettled and Under the Weather
Today’s post (Saturday morning) is brought to you by the letters u, g, g, g, h, h, and the number 45 – as in for a solid 45 minutes, I was paralyzed with indecision and feeling a whole lot of uggghh. For starters, I’m feeling a little sick. It’s that scratchy throat, stuffy nose, something…
The Middle of the Day
Nothing happens in the middle of the day. People talk about being a morning person or a night person, but I never hear anyone say, “I’m a solid 11 – 4 type of guy.” “I’ll take a quality 1:37 pm on a Tuesday over anything else.” I don’t know, maybe there’s a missed opportunity in…
Chemistry and Stars
The text conversation began … “I wanted to match with you first and tell you that your first date description gave me a little bit of the goosebumps because it’s been a while since I’ve had that kind of a first date.” Over the July 4th holiday weekend we went out. We had a good…
Meditation on the Morning Sun
The morning sun is a two-bit player in a scene where the clouds, dressed in pauper grays, shuffle across the stage with lowered heads. Except, that’s not really right, and the scene keeps shifting. I tried to write about it…. how many ways might I describe the sun, what verbs could be attached to it?…