“Sorry” Isn’t Enough

You don’t hear the expression “sackcloth and ashes” much these days. From the Book of Daniel, the expression refers to the custom of wearing crude material and covering yourself with ash to express humility at a religious ceremony. Its colloquial meaning, however, is to be publicly penitent, to be [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Memory

I rode gravity
on my bike, down to where life
proliferated
in a drainage ditch.
Waterbugs spotted pylons—
their black ovals like
tar cast to catch hold.
Amidst the algae, they were
obsidian, holes
in light. I couldn’t
count them even if I knew how.
I would have found them
moving, mounting the water
to elude my eyes.

Starting Fires

Recently, I heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speak on the Bush Administration’s “cooperative” relationship with American corporations and their lobbyists. Corporations, Kennedy argues, are busy sidestepping and ignoring legislation aimed at reducing pollution and are important participants in efforts to dismantle environmental protection. A book by Kennedy with the inflammatory [...]

Finds: What Am I Looking At?

The vast majority of the photos on my blog are found, not made, and photography is a largely unexplored area for me. I thought it might be fun this week to explore the web for photographs, specifically abstact photographs. What started me on this journey was Candleday, which you’ll [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Greta

Today’s pallid sun
stands at the window, searching
for shadows inside
and, finding nothing,
dims nearly to dying. Still,
it’s afternoon, day
will drag hours into
night. At the table she turns
paper in her hands
watching script snake back
on itself—she’s not reading.
She’s waiting. The door
will open. Something
will return at last.

Caffeine Nation

Standing in line at Starbucks yesterday, I suddenly remembered my brother’s description of morning in Disneyland. He told me how each resort sells a “bottomless mug” and at dawn, long before the children raise their sleepy-winkers, the adults drift toward the cafeteria as if it were an alien mothership, clutching their mugs, [...]

Haiku Sonnet: What Will Abide

You say we’ll be here
until the last drop of rain—
Is that forever?
Of all things hidden,
water is the best disguised—
showing up from air
to slick the outside
of a cold glass or wringing
itself from cactus
much too tough to weep.
The rain can slow to nothing
and then pour. You will
smile to keep me here, waiting
for oceans to dry.
The photo comes [...]

On Smartassery

My father always said, “No one likes a smartass,” but, on the whole, my experience hasn’t confirmed his pronouncement. In fact, smartasses can be mighty funny, and their incisive humor can reveal hypocrisy and idiocy we should all see.
What are dissenters but smartasses? Socrates, “The gadfly of Athens,” was a smartass at [...]

Haiku Sonnet: Dreaming of Flight

The airport’s gates are
just for departures. Faces
resign to leave, hands
lifting half aloft
in sleepy goodbye. No one
takes belongings or
notes destinations.
Numbers are abstract again,
and, besides, the few
left behind wait to
follow. We kiss and hug, our
habits harder to
give up, but skies open and
invite us at last.

Finds: Poetry in Motion

I’m well behind the wave in discovering YouTube, but this week I visited just to put in odd terms and see what came up. With poetic forms on my mind, I tried some, and I found these three videos. What I like about YouTube is its democracy. These run from polished to [...]