When I was young, I was in the habit of lying in bed in the falling night. I was waiting. When I would rise from the bed, my body stayed behind. This room of my childhood was no different from any other room, in any other house, in any other place. My bed rested […]
The man who built the house was killed in the bent south bedroom by a woman who was not his wife, but who moved in with the widow to console her. A dark chasm stretched beyond the window. Generations later Tim put his red soldiers in a line at the horizon’s fold and dreamed of […]
A gentle slope drops from the back of our house to an old stone wall, and beyond, a pond surrounded by high trees. The pond was a limestone pit once; the still surface mirrors the darkness below. An oak tree fell into the shallow south end and in the warm months a slender grey heron […]
When I walked outside the wind was racing through the trees and I thought to myself, This is alive. This is alive, the wind, the sky, the air. This is alive, me in this moment, my foot sinking into the ground. This is alive. The moment passed as quickly as it manifested. Later I took a walk […]
She’s getting carried off to the evil witch, captured by her demon monkeys who were sent out to collect the innocent intruder. Look at the Tin Woodman doffing his cap, Dorothy sitting at the edge of her seat like a little girl at the movies, and the winged monkeys wide-eyed and intent. Where’s the fear? There’s […]
An image was stuck in my head. I saw a single tree in the distance. A dog stood beneath it. The vista was all greys and whites and blacks. The dog and the tree were solitary but separate. The image evoked something necessary and almost forgotten. I went to Flickr and typed in the […]
Detective Sunderson walked backward on the beach glancing around now and then to make sure he wasn’t going to trip over a piece of driftwood. The wind out of the northwest had to be over fifty knots and the blowing sand stung his face and grated his eyes. It was below freezing and the surf […]
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 […]
This is where I am: An old man dying from cancer, but still vital and bemused by the intensity of life, is walking on a dark path that runs behind an old house down the hill to the rundown apartment building he lives in. The little patch of woods is the byproduct of a geological quirk. Millenniums […]
What I see clearly I pass by. What I see but do not see, I stand to witness. My heart goes wandering, pulls my soul from its slumber, pesters memories to give up their hard, wary shell and stretch out in childlike glee. All while I stand captive to what I see but do not see. Then […]