It seems as though we spend much of our time on this earth fighting, avoiding, and wishing to manipulate the natural flow and passage of time. In our early years we want to rush it and in our later years we try to slow it down (or rush it in a different sense). Sometimes we’re…
In This Very Moment
Last night I sat by the warm light of a table lamp reading, thinking, and clicking and unclicking a pen. It, the pen, had a push button on the top, and a release button on the side. Push the top, click, the pen appears. Push the side release, click, the pen recedes. I appreciated the…
If Only in My Dreams
I’ll be home for ChristmasYou can plan on mePlease have snow and mistletoeAnd presents by the tree I got out two frying pans and a mixing bowl along with the bacon, eggs, and brioche and asked Alexa to play Christmas music. The first song to play was the Bing Crosby version of “I’ll Be Home…
Christmas Eve 2020
I’ve been staring at a blank screen / “page” for about 20 minutes. Nothing. It’s Christmas Eve and doesn’t feel like it. I feel like anything I write should be full of gratitude – as though the season demands it. And I think this year a lot of people are struggling to muster up gratitude….
Social Media as a Toxic Relationship: It’s Complicated
I have a love / hate relationship with social media. I think a lot of people do. It’s a thing I love to hate and hate to love. I love that I find out about things: concerts, events, and what’s going on in the lives of friends and family. I love that I get three…
Snow Day
Growing up, and living most of my life, in eastern Pennsylvania just outside of Philadelphia, I am no stranger to the words snow day. As a kid, those words were magical and freeing. An unexpected day off. A mini holiday. I can remember listening to the radio as they called the school closing numbers, or…
Haul Out the Holly
I knew I consolidated (purged, donated, got rid of) some of my holiday decorations before I moved to Memphis. It wasn’t until the tree was up and I had searched through all of my unpacked possessions (three or four times) that I realized how much I had consolidated. I no longer had a star or…
Silences So Deep
There are silences so deepyou can hearthe journeys of the soul,enormous footstepsdownward in a freezing earth. John Luther Adams A couple of days ago NPR ran a short portrait of composer John Luther Adams. I knew nothing about Adams. Aside from what they reported, most of which I’ve already forgotten, I still know nothing about…
Acknowledgments
…and to my wife, Beth. She knows how much. That’s the last line in the acknowledgments at the beginning of a book of poems I was about to read. In the acknowledgments, a few well-known poets are mentioned, and Joe Salerno is called irreplaceable, but Beth… well, she knows how much. Stephen Dunn wrote, “The…
I Should Get Organized
The woman held my driver’s license firmly in her right hand and hole punched it with her left. When she handed it back I realized the word “void” had been hole punched in it. I was immediately torn between being fascinated by the cool hole punch and comically bummed about the sad commentary on my…
Warming Up
In an attempt to get back in to the habit of writing, if not everyday at least a few times a week, I’ve been rereading a number of old blog posts and some of the poems and vignettes I’ve written. I always feel a little odd turning to my own writing for inspiration. To be…
Unfinished
A man in a long coat stands in a field on a narrow path surrounded by tall grasses yellowing in the late autumn sun. His shadow stretches and slants in front of him bending upward at the path’s edge. The sky is a shade of blue so rich and thick that it seems mismatched for…