Liberation

If I were a prisoner in a cell for crimes I committed or innocent of all charges and if the keys to the door were there inside with me on my side of the bars and if I did not take them and open the door and walk free I would be the worst prisoner.…

Rachmaninoff Opus 2

The time has come for new beginnings. Being born again is a daily endeavor, a daily emergence. Then upon occasion the blessed event is far more than it might otherwise be intended or expected to be. Another beginning hoves into view. It might be an iceberg or open water. It might be a harbor or…

My Dogs

I want to tell you about my dogs. The first one I named Colleen, because I wanted a dog and I wanted a name I could yell out across the fields on a farm where I lived. Colleen sounds good when you give it all you’ve got and the sound goes out and over those…

Time’s Up

I wind the clocks. I need more time. Things run down. I wind the clocks. I set the hands to make it right. Time gets out of hand sometimes. I wind the clocks. I don’t know what the day will bring. The clocks don’t mind. They face the unknown stoically. Their hands empty to receive…

A Tiny Little Screw

So I went to the hardware store today to buy a tiny little screw like the ones I needed to repair a set of window shade brackets. The brackets were originally fastened to the window frames with tiny little nails and the nails came loose over time, so I thought I’d fix them. I’m that…

MIA

They left me for dead. Wounded. Blood. Everywhere. My own. It scared them. They ran. Good. Let them. I lay. Crawled. Gripped the dirt and pulled up on rocks to crawl up to the next. Pain so great so much like God it became a friend. I talked to it. Spit my name. More blood…

Inevitability

A man must believe in more than death or dying. What might that one thing be? Love, of course, inevitably. The fountainhead from which all life flows or otherwise what flows is mere vanity or nothing into nothing and doomed to nothing more save its own reflection which repeatedly is nothing at all. Love gives…

Hour Glass

Stare at Death. Go ahead. Face it. Look deep and watch the reflection and the sand. See how they flow together in a heap all by themselves ever downward, dissipating and irretrievable. Unless and this is all in all, you reach out and turn it over, the whole device and all its contents. As and…

But Not Out

I want to go home, but not in a box. I’ve seen my father ride in one and his father before him and the women who loved them, all carried like babies in a cradle to their final resting place. Not me. I want to go there. Know I will inevitably, but not so calm,…

On First

I want to tell you a story. A man told it to me today. I want to tell it to you. He organizes baseball games for children with mental and physical disabilities. Himself a man with a limp and a deformed arm from birth, he knows what he’s doing. After a baseball game, after being…