Poetry & Prose
Freedom
We want the freedom to confine ourselves in our personal penitentiaries of opinion.
Houses
Houses have walls, roofs, and floors. Houses cover us from bad weather: from wind and rain from cold and snow, from sun and heat, But houses do not cover us from inner weather. When we walk in through the door, we bring our inner weather with us: irritations and...
Tuesday Morning
Our day star has chased the night stars away. I sip my first coffee. Caffeine rustles my senses, a bird sings in the pine tree. So much world I must choose to ignore to briefly maintain this pleasure.
Silent Night
Holy wonder! The human enunciating mouth, these ancient echoes shaped by teeth, tongue, lips, letter by letter sounding syllables into words. Some letters hidden from sound but not sight, not mouthed. Quiescent. For example, the paradox of Silent Night Every letter in...
Ontological Riddle
There can be no category of nonbeing. Being is nothing until it is something.
FALL
When writing of the third season of the year, why say autumn when we could say fall? Leaves fall, temperature falls a toddler falls with first steps, an old man falls taking his last, we all fall asleep at the end of a day, we fall in love, fall for a scheme, not to...
BACK
In the back of the house now summer is where winter has been, I sit in the sun where for months water was ice. Blossoms on stem sticks, shadows under leaves. earth working worms squirming through loam. I have lived in spring’s uproar of green fire, in autumn’s...
The Shadow Side of ‘Love Me’
Love me. Make me compulsory in your life. Feel hollow when I am absent, ache when I am angry with you. Care enough to get angry with me. Show concern with my attire when I head for public spaces. May fear grip you when I am sick and anxiety when I am late coming home....
The Power of Speech
Adam, gestating in the earth's mud womb, overheard God say ‘let’ seven times. When Adam rose up from uterine clay, he remembered what he had heard. Then he delighted in what he saw. It gave him a yearning for speech.
ALIVE
I stand between my shadow and the sun. My shadow moves. I know I am alive. Or is the sun alive, or both.