If I had any sense I’d be in the kitchen right now, chopping and endlessly washing mixing bowls and spatulas. Instead I’m sitting at the computer. I’ll pay for it tomorrow with panic and exhaustion, but meantime, here’s a few poems for Thanksgiving. At the grocery store I left Czeslaw Milosz’s”Encounter” in an empty […]
MoreI came to Starbucks to write a post about a few sweet gifts I’ve gotten from a few sweet people. As I stood in line I was debating how to write about my good fortune, given the horror in Paris, without sounding oblivious and tone-deaf. Maybe I shouldn’t write about it at all, I thought. […]
MoreHere’s the thing about my small folder of poems about death. Having more than one poem about death is like getting a bag of zucchini from your neighbor—you don’t know what to do with an overload. (I’m just realizing this very second that owning, not to mention labeling, a small folder of poems about death is […]
MoreThe Travelling Onion by Naomi Shihab Nye “It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship —why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” — Better Living Cookbook When […]
MoreThe Truth by Philip Schultz You can hide it like a signature or birthmark but it’s always there in the greasy light of your dreams, the knots your body makes at night, the sad innuendos of your eyes, whispering insidious asides in every room you cannot remain inside. It’s there in the unquiet ideas that […]
MoreFor My Daughter by Grace Paley I wanted to bring her a chalice or maybe a cup of love or cool water I wanted to sit beside her as she rested after the long day I wanted to adjure commend admonish saying don’t do that […]
MoreThere’s a sad nip in the air this morning, a reminder to get the rest of my summer beach posts up before they’re as out-of-date as puka shells and jellies. I count myself among the most fortunate of souls that I got to return to Maryland this summer to spend a week at the beach with […]
MoreAlba by Jack Gilbert After a summer with happy people, I rush back, scared, gulping down pain wherever I can get it. I don’t like all my nicknames, but I can’t say I don’t deserve them. Debbie Downer is the one I earned for introducing grit to conversations of spun sugar. And […]
MoreI’m a stickler about thank-you notes, a real pain to my children after birthdays and Christmas, and self-righteous and judgey when my own presents aren’t acknowledged. And yet, as with other deep and firmly-held beliefs, I can be a hypocrite about applying the rules to myself. Which is all to confess that I haven’t sent […]
MoreYour baby grows a tooth, then two, and four, and five, then she wants some meat directly from the bone. It’s all over: she’ll learn some words, she’ll fall in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet talker on his way to jail. And you, your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue nothing. […]
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