Well what are we moaning about? We knew the forecast was poor. For goodness sake, it's not a tsunami! Think of Samoa—beautiful Samoa whe...

slightly scented short lived words and roses by Stanley Pelter. (George Mann Publications, Eaton, Winchester, Hampshire SO21 IES, UK. 2009...

Train Rome to Naples, countryside covered in grapevines, orchards planted in careful rows, tomatoes already sprouting—the fields are planted...

French dramatist Victor Hugo once said that forty is the old age of youth. I wholeheartedly agree with his words. After passing the age of f...

I shake it. It makes a feeble sound like an ant’s complaint. I pour it out onto the table where it breaks into a pile of noise, and like Hum...

The Ningxia Street night market is a jumble of hawkers and customers, the hum of propane burners, the clack-clack of spatulas in woks, and a...

Dusk mutes green and all of green’s variations. Along the path, bare feet press the sheen out of damp clover. White blossoms of blackberrie...

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...

Open the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and enter the Nysian meadow, naming roses, crocuses, and beautiful violets . . . irises too, and hyacinths...

On one side of it hang small wooden clothes hangers, demure and down-turning like an old maid’s shoulders. On the other half is a row of fou...

He's an artist, still asleep under the quilt. Last night's shoes and clothes are scattered, leaving a trail back to the kitchen. I...

This morning I roll out of bed with sore hips and limp to the toilet. Surely I’m not as old as I feel, though a glance in the mirror is inco...

A short skirt is a promise. Nothing more, nothing less. Guys view promises as sacred trusts; women know promises can easily evaporate, like ...

mist eases below a windbreak hawthorn an alphorn grips air forest walk. struggle. climb over mutilated trees, snap detached branches, crunch...

When you investigate my juicy plum, when you walk the rim of my Riesling, when you buzz me, gleefully, in the middle of a nap, I try, O fly,...

. “...I wanna hear and see / everything...” Jimi Hendrix , Up from the Skies . The rainy scent of the Tennessee Mountains on a May evenin...

Some months before the full year has passed, the family make plans. The plaque for the grave—this will be kept simple. Two river stones and ...

with his crook he navigates the rough terrain early bluegrass and white clover villagers liken the shepherd to ruddy-limbed Pan piping to ny...

. Today in the North Georgia mountains the sun’s straight up, school’s out—boarded-up shops and broken soda machines, filling stations with...

. The sky is filled with terns tonight, their red bills arrowing down into the water. Fishing boats wend their way home to the harbor, whil...

. My fiancé kept a hand printing press in his bedroom. He was a printer by trade and bought the press to make extra money. Two nights a week...

. It’s suddenly evening as you slip out of the bright afternoon and into the bamboo’s dark, luxuriant corridors. With so little light reac...

. at noon it rises out of thin air and glides from afar into the garden . through the valley wind sifts pollen from the vessels of daylil...

. “Go West, young man!” —John B. Soule, Horace Greeley, Thomas Fuller and possibly others, ca. 1851. . The Midwest: My high school sweet-h...

. Winter school holidays—my two great-grandsons are in town to stay with their Daddy. I take them, as I do every year, to the movies. And t...