Thy People Shall Be My People

How often do we reflect on the profundity of the simple proverb Opposites Attract? It’s a brief axiom as familiar as a surname and ordinary as an apple, but to probe its meaning and implication is to plumb a mine shaft of mystery. What do we mean when we say, “opposites attract?” Why are we

The Maples of Broad Street

The maples of Broad Street
have ceased to be tame,
The maples of Broad Street
are shaking their manes

A Simple Wooden Glider

A simple wooden glider at the curb for Bulk Trash Day. Its rear cushion sags and hangs tenuously by a loop re-sewed twice. The armrests have long since lost the softness of their pseudo suede and are worn and polished like a haystack rock on the Oregon coast. Years ago, the chipboard seat support bent

In His Time

Every year I marvel more and more at how long it takes for the Aster and the Goldenrod to bloom. Think back to when you saw your first blossom of Spring. Maybe it was a Crocus against your house, or perhaps you spied Snowdrops in Central Park. But now, in the damp of an autumn

For Rebecca

Tonight was the closest that I have ever come to seeing our county, our town, and our home from the view of my own wife, my own flesh.

Juxtaposition on 37th

I noticed this scene when I was stopped at a light crossing Manhattan. The longer I watched it unfold, the more I wondered if I was watching a prank or a living art exhibit…

Cacophony

It must have been

an evening in early August

when ‘cacophony’ was coined.

What other moment

could have minted

such an awesome articulation:

the world’s most perfect word?

Grieving Until

I can suffer an August heat wave because I know that an October is not far away. I can bear up under the bleak midwinter of February in part by anticipating the dulcet delights of May. Each extreme is an opposite end of the seasons’ pendulum, and we balance and brace ourselves against the oscillation

The Former Things That Have Passed Away

Interstate 80 stretches like a spine across the commonwealth’s equator. Just a few degrees north of Pennsylvania’s actual axis of latitudinal symmetry, the bituminous byway traces parallel paths of two- or three-lane highway across the white ash graveyards of our westerly neighbor. As is now standard across the federal interstate highway system, I-80’s exit numbers

The Unheralded Life Arc of a Scrap of Iron Ore

Behold! The unheralded life arc of a scrap of iron ore. No pomp, no circumstance. Handled by a hundred human hands, regarded by none.