My mother at home in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania Dust of the coal mines on the window sill lightened to gray by a gentle snow, our simple clapboard house also freshened from within by the exotic smell of oranges, a seeming miracle delivered only at the holidays from some far off land, an extravagant purchase that […]
It has been over 20 years since I rehaired a violin bow. I guess that is really my first ‘retirement,” when I gleefully gave up a profession that demanded perfection beyond my mere mortal skills. Although over 3000 players were satisfied with my work, I always found flaw in each one! So when a fellow […]
Last year I smiled at the honeybees as they went about their work, all buzz and hover along a wall of sweetness. This year I stare at lonely blossoms on a silent sun strewn wall and try to convince myself that they will come back.
Oh for that Brindle coat and Mastiff jaws so joyfully flinging a plush toy left right left right fwapping herself so fast I marveled at how this Boston Terrier did not scramble her brain. And now she’s gone of a brain tumor. How much joy do I clench in my jaws and shake myself silly, […]
There is no love there is only love brain as cleaver slices into scientific categories sensations that infiltrate so deep I do not even sniff them until new allurements rule my world. Denial is futile – there is only love.
Across the watering hole from us humans, African elephant scoops hay with relaxed trunk, sweeping the ground near feet, no need to look, letting sweet aromas guide the nonchalant motion. More purposed coiling up to the mouth, right back down to continue the forage. Tail sweeps sideways in a slower rhythm, not to chase […]
No winter peace, the small retailer sweeps aside the chaos of Christmas sales, revealing too many to count New Years Day, and pay tax April 15. Scratch and dent, forsaken, or mistakes needing resolution, all echo my emotional inventory, foibles and triumphs both caused residue far beyond the corner cobwebs. Too late for the clearance […]
One pistol shot changed his life, but not how you think. Only 11, gun from Mama’s lover stuck in his shirt, celebrating New Years Eve shooting into the air, a poor man’s pleasure long before civic fireworks. Showing off for the other kids, your shot, of all the gleeful noise down the streets, your shot […]
Only once have I carried a rifle in public, for a 6th grade school play about the pioneers, my father’s World War II carbine an essential prop. After school, when I got into the way back of a neighbor’s station wagon, pointing that gun out the rear window, I already felt strange. Then she told […]
Finding out that Richard Blanco was speaking for free in Durham at the Carolina Theater, I was shocked. Shocked that I was so out of touch with such cultural events that I stumbled across it in the free Durham News that hits my driveway every week. And even more shocked that the theater was packed! […]