Trying to Breathe

A week ago, Renée pointed to her computer and said, “You should watch this video, but be prepared.” We don’t have a television in our house and neither of us have been desensitized to TV violence for at least three decades. To watch the scene of George Floyd being strangled to death in broad daylight …

Juxtaposition of Germs

A dark SUV flips a U-turn and parks a stone’s cast from where I crouch over an unconscious bundle of fur. A woman hops out and crosses the road. With one hand in her hair, she speaks with urgency. “I hit something. What did I hit?” I was returning from work at the power plant …

Friends at Breakfast

Saw this symbiotic scene out in the meadow a few mornings ago. See haiku below. head down, deer grazes magpie picks distended ticks few words are exchanged  

Wendell Berry

The Peace of Wild Things  (by Wendell Berry) When despair grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron …

Li-Young Lee

Historically, I have feared poetry. I can think of only a couple exceptions. Eventually, I learned the distinction between "accessible" and "inaccessible" poetry. It was the latter that frightened me, making me feel inadequate, thinking I was too dull to get the point or too disconnected from popular culture to understand the punch line. But …

Distance

My hands are not used to all this soap and water. The alcohol from my little spritzer of homemade hand sanitizer stings the tiny cuts on the edge of my finger. I greet a co-worker from a distance, our hands tucked into our pockets. The morning meeting typically consists of thirty-five power-plant workers crowded around …

Fasten Your Seatbelt

The Corona Virus (a.k.a., COVID-19) is infiltrating human populations all around the world now, and the hysteria is becoming palpable. I am over sixty years old, and other than the Y2K scare, I do not personally remember any similar public reaction to a common, universal threat. People are actually hoarding masks and hand sanitizer and …