drmstream[writing]

Last week a man was killed in a car crash in Uganda. He was a pas­tor. He was also one of the most mean-spirited and vicious peo­ple I have ever encoun­tered in my life. He made me ques­tion what Evil was. His death has prompted an out­pour­ing of sor­row from peo­ple touched by his min­istry and […]

When nature wreaks destruc­tion, ele­ment con­fronts ele­ment. In the after­math, the residue lingers and hard­ens. Burnt wood defies decay. Ash wafts in the air. The insis­tence of fresh growth encum­bers the raw skele­tons with igno­rant radi­ance. When man wreaks destruc­tion, fear begets fear. His heart seeks out a hard shell, his hands crave indus­try, his mind […]

The rumor spread across cam­pus like the brush fires that sparked dur­ing dry fall after­noons at the mouth of Bloody Run: some­one had got a girl up the lane preg­nant. The Head­mas­ter knew. They were going to get expelled. At first we thought it was Sam. He had a ground floor sin­gle and he took […]

16 Cold Moun­tain is a house With­out beams or walls. The six doors left and right are open The hall is blue sky. The rooms all vacant and vague The east wall beats on the west wall At the cen­ter noth­ing. Bor­row­ers don’t bother me In the cold I build a lit­tle fire When I’m […]

The smile is never far from her lips, the twin­kle is always alive in her eyes.  She dances through life, plucky, resilient, wise, play­ful. She taught me how to find my soul.  She is my muse and my mate.  She never flinches.  She never wavers. She takes your breath away. Happy Birth­day, T. I love you.

Chief Mas­sas­oit sold the town to Miles Stan­dish in 1649 for some coats, hatch­ets and knives. The land was low and swampy in the east, ris­ing to rolling pas­tures and fer­tile ground in the west. The busi­ness of mak­ing a life played out over the gen­er­a­tions. Fam­i­lies set­tled, young men went off to war, fortunes […]

Argu­men­tum Ornitho­log­icum I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a sec­ond or per­haps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the num­ber of birds def­i­nite or indef­i­nite? The prob­lem involves the exis­tence of God. If God exists, the num­ber is def­i­nite, because God knows how […]

“I want you to keep your dig­nity,” I say. You look at me. I see the con­fu­sion, the blank stare, the quiver of panic that lingers at the edge of your eyes and in the taut skin below your jaw. “I know,” you say. But you don’t say any­thing else. I can barely con­trol what hap­pens inside me, […]

Love of beauty is Taste. The cre­ation of beauty is Art. Ralph Waldo Emer­son There’s a pur­pose to this great thing that the Inter­net has spawned beyond the cre­ation of com­merce engines, mar­ket­ing cam­paigns and wealth beyond our wildest imag­i­na­tion. The world has become too large, genius too widely dis­trib­uted, sto­ries too impor­tant and creativity […]

In the small New Eng­land town that I grew up in, the ceme­tery was the ful­crum point of mem­ory. Our cer­e­monies were cen­tered there. The parade route ran up the main street, past the hard­ware store and the lawyer’s office, around the town square and to the memo­r­ial at the grave­yard. Pen­nants would snap at […]