LURE
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.
Sunday Elephant
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 […]
Year-end Inventory
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 […]
POPS
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 […]
ONCE I HAD A HERO
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 […]
Richard Blanco in Durham
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! […]
One Letter
There is no Art, nor is there Life. No loss, no gain, no us, no them. All our categories and labels, divisions and distinctions, are merely linguistic – letters with no more meaning than the letter “I.”
Hafiz Lives!
What is it about these old Sufi poets that their magic continues even today? A conspiracy between a translator, a bookstore and poetry-loving friends blows a Tuesday evening dinner in Chapel Hill into the spirit realm. Bhavani is a friend who loves and creates poetry, so for her birthday, I went to a bookstore and […]
The Last Tomato
The vines are withering yet a few tomatoes miraculously ripen some each day. No birds or insects defile this fertile fading. Smaller and less robust than its summer siblings, each miniature offering packs homegrown flavor into an abbreviated form. In three bites only a memory.
Birds of Dawn
Summer finally vanquished cool breeze of fall welcomed through the bedroom window a bit chilly all night under warm weather sheets. As the black lightens into gray, two distinct chirps awake me, sharing news of the coming sun. The short cheerful rhythms help disperse the darkness along with my fading slumber. “It’s a new day,” […]