Poetry & Prose
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...
A Dog and Her Master
The master tosses the ball. The dog cannot help but bring it back. Plus, she is rewarded with treats for her exuberant joy. The master drives the car. The dog hangs her head out, ears flying. The master scratches under her flea collar. The dog wags her tail,...
Practicing Cowardice
“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” Albert Einstein Today, once again, I had the opportunity to practice cowardice. Given all that I have been given, my Judeo-Christian heritage, the righteous...
Sister Sappho
‘Eros has shaken my mind, wind sweeping down the mountain on oaks.’ Sappho Me too, sister Sappho, that disordering god, Eros, has roared down late mountains, his wind stormed my mind with black lightening, smashed reasonable oaks into sticks, uprooting strategies and...
A Note of Appreciation
You are existentially sweet, not like the pear whose sweetness is essential, chemical, organic. You have reason to be otherwise. It is within your power to become a bitter fruit. But you are decisively sweet, repeatedly chosen and practiced, amicable day after live...
Russia: 1994
My father went to Russia and came back with Russian gifts: babushka headscarves, black lacquered jewelry boxes, and nesting dolls that live inside each other like people do. He bought a Russian army captain’s cap and an olive drab coat big enough to hide dissenting...
The Book of Jeremiah
see: Jeremiah 20:9 I have not been caught committing crimes of omission they have gone unnoticed, therefore unreported. They were transgressions of silence, my mouth full of words needing to be said. but swallowed, not bitten by teeth into articulate sound....