Spring Ode with Robins and Mallards
My common town looks so different when I wander it with a curious stranger, telling the usual stories, how we took the beer money…
Read More1.10 Coming and Going
Sonnet VIII
All functions at borderline normal, the old heap keeps turning over although the needle is approaching big E. Man-killing Achilles hasn’t caught up with…
Read MoreApple Jacks, Affairs, and Separation
It wasn’t the nights spent alone that forced my decision to be made but the mornings he came home. In the night, there was…
Read MoreDeath & Taxes
But you have missed the snowdrops’ promised rise Again, buried me in a blizzard of forms As surely as you have gone to the worms,…
Read MorePale Blue Dot
The hierarchy of round things roots in eyes Held close, so close that blinking heaves a gale; Therefrom to lips and hips and on…
Read MoreOnly fear can defeat life
I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary,…
Read MoreFear itself
This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in…
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Holy Week in Uganda
Sunrises in Uganda happen suddenly. On the equator, dawn is dark, turning pink at the eastern corners at the sky at 6:00, 6:30. Then…
Read MoreWillingly move downward
The adage that the exalted will be humbled and vice versa is not a tidbit of proverbial wisdom such as, “Pride cometh before a…
Read MoreHelps us feel safer
When something happens that is “unthinkable”—so inconsistent with our view of the world that we can’t imagine it—we do predictable things to make sense…
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