Room Temperature

Recipes are not written for Sunday morning bakers in 19th-century colonials. “Room temperature,” in particular, is a description that has the appearance of objective uniformity, but really possesses none of the attributes that render directions clear, lucid, or helpful to a homeowner such as myself. It is not so much that I am unfamiliar with a space

Tulip People

An Ode to the Tulip

The Last Bath

Will we know it when it happens? And (if so) how will we know? Will we know that we know? Will we be able to recognize it? . Will the moment herald itself   with the shout of an archangel? Or will we anticipate its coy arrival with   a kind of parental prescience? .

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

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

Tomato Plants in Late June

Tomato plants in late June

don’t smell like anything

except

tomato plants in late June.

Singular unto themselves

their redolence subsists…

I Have An Antique Rose

I have an antique rose; She waits patiently for me. When I draw nigh with pruning shears, She utters not a plea. Her thorny branches twine in knots, They tangle by degrees. Yet when I start to thin them out, She neither fights nor flees. She stands in proud defiance, An indomitable foe; It’s ne’er

My Lilacs

I do not— when my feet at long last find Jordan’s verdant banks, in those fleetly fading moments between my final breaths, before the curtain falls upon my mortally shuffled coil— I do not want to there remember or know any reason to regret that I neglected or did not otherwise seize even a single

Dump Trip Saturday

Dump Trip Saturday is sacred among Saturdays. It stands alone unto itself, unique and holy. Its rites and rituals are solitary and serene; their execution is communal (and clamorous!). . Dump Trip Saturday is always borne from Saturdays past: A pile of scraps after a completed project, appliances failed beyond repair, a neglected playhouse, a

Up to the Light

My younger daughter spent a considerable amount of time (I am told) writing this note for me the other day. She was so obviously pleased with herself and her tiny correspondence that she met me at the front door and wriggled like Christmas morning as she told me where in the house to find the note