Check-out Time Is 11:00 a.m.

No charge for the air you breathe. Sunlight through the window comes with the pane. The softness of the mattress is free, the mattress is not. The tile in the bathroom is built into the overall price, so are the faucets at the sink and the running water. The tv remote...

For John Berryman (1914-1972)

I wanted to write you a letter, John, thanking for Love and Fame. You were there. Much. I liked you, your friend Henry, your seriously playful syntax, your modest excesses, your extroverted introspection, full face forward, inside out. Now I read that you are dead,...

My Hat

My favorite hat is not even my hat. I found it orphaned on a bench in park. It first sat on another history; someone who preferred blue, someone who fished, someone who tied his own flies. If you saw me wearing it you might well think I was that one. I neither fish...

Language

A man and a bear wake up in the morning the same. But what comes out of the mouth, a grunt or a word? A word makes us human.

The Literary Ant

I was wrong about what I thought was interesting to ants. It turns out they like classical literature. Some do. One ant, a friend of mine, has, in the last three days, walked through the first 13 chapters of Homer’s Odyssey and still wants more. I wonder what he...