drmstream[writing]

As dusk falls, the lights on the rides illu­mi­nate and silence seeps into the day. The waves are low. The moon sits high in the sky, aloof but com­fort­able. The night gains momen­tum on the board­walk. You sit on the beach and plunge your hands deep in the sand. The sur­face is cool. Just below, […]

In a Dark Time In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deep­en­ing shade; I hear my echo in the echo­ing wood– A lord of nature weep­ing to a tree, I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and ser­pents of the den. What’s mad­ness but […]

On a trail I walk there is an old tree that has given up life but stands rooted stolidly in the ground. The trunk is thick and black. The sea­sons have embalmed it. The wood is so hard that the bark won’t break off in your hands. The boys pick up stray scraps that have been […]

These young men are wav­ing good­bye as they start the 1000 mile trek from Pitts­burg to New Orleans. They’ll skirt the Allegheny Moun­tains, pass into Ten­nessee and pick up the Jack­son Mil­i­tary Road for the final 400 mile descent to the Mis­sis­sippi Delta and the bay­ous and great swamps sur­round­ing New Orleans. They are following […]

The Bow­ery in New York City in the early 1920’s. Pro­hi­bi­tion is around the cor­ner — then the restau­rant will move up to street level and the liquor store down below.

The sky lit up sul­furous and unnat­ural. The dull thumps and whistling screeches rang in the air, a few beats off. We sat down by the water wait­ing for the town fire­works to start. The coun­try club up the hill was wind­ing their dis­play down. A fam­ily could have sat here 240 years ago and wit­nessed the […]

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 […]

An essen­tial step for­ward is the devel­op­ment of a fit­ting order of the day: a divi­sion of the day that gives a rhythm to the day, with a rea­son­ably fixed pat­tern of exer­tion and relax­ation, of spir­i­tual breath­ing in and breath­ing out, of order­ing one’s envi­ron­ment and moments when one is in touch with something […]

Two trees I stud­ied the topo­graph­i­cal map once To find out the secret of the two big trees In the lower yard. They were the per­ma­nent Things about that piece of land our house Had stood on for more than one hun­dred years. The two acres peaked at 480 feet above sea level And dipped in […]

There was a time once when the open­ing bars of this song — almost any by the Pogues, really — would bring the sense of tears to the cor­ners of my eyes, a tight­ness across my chest.  There was so much Love that had been lost, so much yearn­ing that had been mis­placed, too many […]