Although I have a fine sensibility for tradition, honor and luxury, I make a choice, having seen two queens approaching their respective one hundredth birthdays. One in a palace with a crown, surrounded by pomp and circumstance, protected and revered and another wearing a babushka in a damp cellar hiding from the bombs, illuminated by…
What you do is send your soul off to school. You know the day will come. You dread it in a way, selfishly wanting the child to stay at home, but you know there comes a time. So all neatly dressed and ready as you’ll ever be, shoes without a scuff, Big Chief pad, two…
Once I drove a school bus in Iowa. Quite a few times, actually, over a number of years. Out in the wild, wide places of time and place long, long ago and I had four little boys who rode my bus. The Vlegers. Their last name was Vleger as I recall and cannot forget and…
There is a man who places linen and silverware on tables. He places linen and silverware on tables. That is what he does where people sit and eat. They spoil the linen and soil the silverware and they leave. This man removes once crisp linen and not too long ago spotless silverware and once again…
Remember all those throes upon the slanting deck. Place yourself where you are placed by destiny and behold the craven acts of others, the heroics of some and take your measure upon the stage about to sink beneath your feet. Strike out, survive and live to tell what life meant when life sank unsinkable below…
Tell your people you love them. Once long ago I rode through the night and the radio brought me this message in a song. Dvorak’s Song to the Moon from the opera Rusalka. I cannot play it for you here, but when I heard it then the message came clear. Tell your people you love…
There I sat, waiting for the light, absorbed in me. Oh the thoughts, the uninvited guests to my morbid feast, the unwelcome sons of bitches that have spoiled so many parties I’ve tried to throw, the bullies of my soul. I looked up and realized the light had gone to yellow. That means I stopped…
Old friends, the time has come for us to part. I’ve worn you out, for all the times I’ve worn you out there working. Toes scuffed down to safety steel. Paint splattered on your desiccated uppers. How many laces did I break? Soles worn through completely like mine from time to time and me still…
I come to where I started, ‘neath night and day travailed between the stars and earth, a birth canal of freedom into a world known only to the Maker and to me. I stand now where I started upon bended knee, not in subjugation, but in homage to all I’ve seen. This line, this commencement,…
They all stare down and twiddle their thumbs, tap with their fingers and bow their heads in prayerful homage to the screens they hold, the little electric heart and souls of existence. I hold my book, my silent paginated friend, all energy within and no batteries or power cord required. I prefer the leather and…
