Tag: family

We have gathered in twos and threes, drawn together, linking in the same town as if we can be nourished by the juxtaposition. Still, I woke feeling alone in all the world

Out the sun porch window, looking south with the morning sun slanting across the huge dirt yard, a lone bluebird stands jittery as a high school boy walks by th

His body no longer serves him, and he is reduced to the care of others. None of his family says it out loud, but think the duration of his dying, and the work h

The new church is still only a shiny, steel skeleton standing beside the revival-meeting tent for the throngs of Easter faithful, gathering to celebrate the res

The upended dresser, its drawers splayed like the legs of a shot giraffe, lay for weeks spewing their contents, a symbol of her life's slipped-away order. The W

As a boy I watched my 19th century mother wash seven sets of sheets every Monday in the machine with the rhythmic agitator sounding like drums in elevator music

sits on the dining table for now, too precious yet to store. Proof of a past — of mortality. Such fun in the humid Mexican heat, the clear waters a blessing. Th

The time was rich Political vitality thundering THS with over 3000 students A pink two-bedroom stucco The Beatles Long-haired men Then there were the two of you

Perhaps it is the early morning before people wake and the empty house, save my sleeping wife who must rest for her work day, or this old room having been here

We pretend the discipline of once-a-day feeding, old raggedy assed Coco and the Queensland Heeler. They do their morning dance as the dishes are put before them

Do you believe in God? No, my mother told me, and my nine- year-old world shifted. I had learned the word infinity somewhere, and had looked up to the night sky

Down from college, the young man sorts through the closet filled with past treasures, willingly shedding grade school mementos, small ceramic attempts, unused p

When I was drafted out of college, and Americans were dying at a fierce rate in Korea, and Truman’s War put the President in political hot water, and my father

I am next to the palm tree just before the slope down to Silver Street before it was uprooted, before the middle girls were born, before the first letter of the

We sat in my daughter’s comfortable home and talked of what made me a pacifist, my non-combatant military experience and the lieutenant colonel in New York who

Today at The Aquarium of the Pacific I saw a child’s face with the look of perceptive age, of worry beyond her years as if she understood war, and life expectan

Sue told me. I laughed and said I’d write a poem about the idea. There is some- thing command- ing about Christmas conjuring childhood memories. Of course, I ma

Perhaps it was the old Sand Dunes Tavern, the uniqueness of living in so unconventional a manner. Or the realization that we were different which came to me ear

More than forty years has slipped away from the sounds long de- parted as I drove aimlessly home. Was it the years that brought a sense of my dead brother, or t

There we were dancing upstairs by the window wall Nicole and Casie and I, maybe when they were four and five, maybe to Dylan’s Hey Mr. Tambourine Man. The sweet