Just Because

History textbooks used to report historical fact.  The good ones might even try to analyze the significance of some events, some movements.  But so little history has occurred over the past century that we only ever read about otherwise long-forgotten people, places, and the things that made them noteworthy.  There is no desire to know Read More …

Irony Still Hurts

Looking down the length of a pointer finger doing its job, I hear him intone once more, Don’t fall in love.  Don’t you ever fall in love. It is obvious that he says this tongue-in-cheek because I can see it working the inside of his mouth, keeping him from clenching his exasperated jaw and filling Read More …

The Moon is Not White

The moon is not whitenor silver nor grey The moon is agedlike a familiar lover She gapes full and rounda yellowed parchment poem Her rhythm slow above the treelineHer rhyme cuts cloud and sky Like a tired old toothtoo knowing and known to be bashful The clouds catch nothing of an unseen suna musty grey-blue Read More …

A Little Talk

Discomfort with solitary, calm, and quiet reflection keeps far too many of God’s creatures from the merest and profoundest blessings this good world offers to its harried inhabitants. The ferry carried George across the narrow bay with only one other passenger, both headed to a small island.  George was purposefully seeking the isolation. His fellow Read More …

Peripheral Truths

My father tells me that my grandfather loved the outdoors.  I only ever saw the man in his nursing home, and it used to be difficult for me to imagine him doing anything but sitting in a wheelchair and eating mashed potatoes.  But I was seeing him through a child’s eyes.  It is amazing how Read More …

Dark, Dark.

— She was Stephanie, and I was young enough to think she was the whole world entire. There is a time for a young man, before he knows anything else of a woman, that he believes all and any sustenance he will ever need is in her hand. If he could only glance his fingers Read More …