. I’m a writer with strong nostalgic longings. One of my favorite essayists is Charles Lamb, someone else who labored for decades as a harm...

. old red Schwinn abandoned in weeds― outburst of rain The "old red Schwinn" poem was written on May 23, 1988. I was probably smo...

A haibun is a family gathering, perhaps a reunion, of young and old and middle aged. Some dads huff prose and some cousins whisper poetry an...

On a Sunday morning, dad's sitting in a private hospital room by a sunlit window. He tells me his doctors have agreed to let him use a c...

I meet by chance on the street someone who resembles one of my dead grandpas and who could be the twin brother of Carl Sandburg, who died ev...

In late October, the last of summer's crickets can still be heard amid the leaves and twigs near my office here in North Carolina. They...

In omnibus requiem quaesivi et nusquam inveni nisi in een Hoecken met een Böcken. . — Thomas à Kempis "Everywhere I have sought rest an...

. (from Acts 13:13 to 14:28) Ah, the salty air from Paphos to Perga; bold words then in Pisidia's Antioch and in Iconium, but driven awa...

. "I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils…" . Theodore Roethke * . I have a job, but am sometimes out of work. I try to si...

"Son, I'm taking the last apple." "Can we share it?" After washing my hands, then the Granny Smith, I cut the apple ...

It's early December, and thick snowflakes are falling, brightening what's left of an afternoon. My sister and I clomp home in our un...

Our parents take my sister and me to a relative's farm near Sunbury. The barnyard's full of running headless chickens and a crazed d...

Autumn's a slow process, like rust. Cars abandoned last longer than their drivers. I feel "immortal" as nature decays. Dad...

Cool, clear morning. As I lock the car, a fledgling robin tumbles out of a small bush between two parking lots. Its mother keeps herself bet...