Once in the early 90’s I had occasion to stay in an odd little house on the side of a ravine in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland. One could not see the place from the small untravelled road, and had to go down a steep dirt drive to get…
I’ve never understood why anyone would revile a bright yellow flower, like a sunburst shining up smiling from the ground! Whose tap root goes deep enough to aerate the soil; who is tough enough to brave cold and spring frost to bring much-needed vitamins to those same ungrateful folks! Get…
Every stern thing we think or say about another has its roots in our own dissatisfaction. The mirror is perfect: as outside, so inside. What would it be like if we trusted other people enough to let them go? By ‘trust’ I don’t mean ‘approve of’ or ‘Oh, I know…
As I wrote in my last post, Suppose There is No Armageddon, I threatened my teenaged niece with the specter of reading the aforementioned poem to her if she continued telling me about apocalyptic dooms a-coming. This got me thinking… and by evening I was guffawing, all by myself, with…
This poem visited me insistently over a period of weeks, demanding that I write down the stanzas even in the middle of the night, in the dark, on a pad I kept on my bedside stand. I had become fed up with cries of doom I’d been hearing from many…
You know how when you’re hiking and you come over a rise and see below you a lake – as flat as gravity can make it, blue-lit by the sky; edges fringed with summer-leaved trees? And the very waterness of it, its placidity, the surprise: and something in you relaxes…
Sunday Soapbox: The Town Center Every town needs a center, a central square, a plaza – just as all old towns used to have, and in many parts of the world still do. Just as every person needs a center, and every atom has a center. Towns without centers make…
Today I Killed My Bank Account Today I killed my bank account It had kept on biting me Indifferent tellers riding on its camel back Numbers jumble me like bad backass dreams I find in my alphabet soup So I took revenge I don’t pay rent,…
Sneezelight Next time you have to sneeze, just Think about the top of your head, Just Focus on the top of your head Keep focusing! Through all temptation stay Right faithful to The top of your head The sneeze will lift up like a…
Garden Club Outside it’s snowing wetly A woman sits in a maroon chair With a stripey calm design in it I see her from above Numerous ladies hum practical, Practical hymns Getting loaf-cake in the kitchen Filling up the chairs A huge…
I’m visiting Santa Cruz just now and my conclusion is this: the thing wrong with America, weird human consciousness notwithstanding, can be expressed in one word: cars. If there weren’t any, all these people would be milling about still, but that would feel cozy rather than threatening – because they…
Dancing in my mother’s living room in Oregon filmed by her significant other, Al Getty…