Posts for June 8, 2025 (page 11)

Cambridge English says a “sponsor” is “someone who supports a person, organization, or activity by giving money”. But what do we call it when we are forced to give money? “Extortion” seems fitting. All I know is, I don’t have so much left over for sponsorships when so much is taken by force. Income taxes are not optional. Interstate tolls. Property taxes and vehicle registrations. Banking and credit card fees. I could go on, but you get the picture. Here is the truth: “Money” is less a tangible thing than a representation of value. The “money” game only works when we all agree to go along. But every game must come to an end, and there is only one winner. When the game ends, we will be the losers. But don’t worry about it. Those things that have real value don’t cost a nickel.  And they are available to you in proportion to your individual choices. Me? I choose to give. To pour myself out, for only then will there be space within me for the universe to refill my spirit. And I try not to put this on others: my peace and contentment are for me to define and claim–no one else is responsble for giving it to me. See? I’m no extortionist.

hello June,

Sundays have changed, haven’t they?
today I’ll head to the farmers market
not post church or to purchase vegetables
but to work
I have no complaints
regarding this position
life is totally and irrevocably
different than when I began adulthood
the contrast is bold
exemplified this weekend
thirty five years since we married, I graduated, it began
     it ended somewhere along the way
and now
peace is subtle but present
I will sell radishes today
which causes me to chuckle
is there a better way to celebrate You and creation
than to offer something pulled from the earth
thanks June, for getting me to this day
a lifetime and then some

amen

Every time the Atlantic turned her shoulder,
He grinned like a boy who’d been dared to run.
“We could ride that,” he’d say, salt already in his voice,
while WTVZ mapped the arc of disaster on our screen.
I was the ballast, the calculator, the one who filled the bathtub.
He and my son packed surfboards and licorice like sacrament.

The Toyota’s frame rattled with wild hymn and steel, Jimmy Buffett preaching through busted speakers, as we aimed for Carolina’s bones—storm-braced, but soft in her dune-covered belly. We passed plywood windows and empty crab shacks, a jellyfish corpse baking where we’d plant our flag.

I didn’t surf. I watched, a lighthouse mother rooted in gingham and sunscreen and dread. I read half a page and tracked his silhouette, as he hurled himself at godwaves,
each crash a Morse code I ached to decipher— son, stepfather, sea—boys daring sky.

The beach patrol came like prophets waving bullhorns instead of scripture. “You should go,” they said. They didn’t shout. Even the wind bent to listen.

Gary, full of charm and bone-luck, talked them down while Paul beamed, wet as rebirth, surfboard beneath one arm.

That night we returned to storm-shifted earth: patio chairs in the pool, oaks weeping limbs across the drive, bricks loose from the flue. Dennis had danced through Hampton Roads while we chased the sea like fools or saints.

I was hungry but didn’t eat. He turned the wheel, whistling, unaware of the small war beginning in his cells.

What we fled saved us.
What we didn’t see would not.

Can words be meaningless?

And when does thinking and speculating end

assertion begin?

Look at your hands

it’s in your body,

in the way you walk

the way you smile

the way you think 

take a deep breath

the words will come.

Does intimacy occur without sex?

Of course

How?

I know about that place of getting close

face to face where I can

feel & smell the breath

see the tiniest hairs on the stillest arm

climb inside another’s rhythm

have no other thought than of that tender moment

& my pleasure is the pleasure of another.

You don’t have intimate friends? You don’t follow the breath of

your girlfriends, never letting your thoughts wander, your eyes dart?  

You don’t watch her closely when she talks, noticing the newest gray hair,

the slightest wrinkle in her cheek?  You don’t hear the tiniest crack

in her voice, cackle in her smile?

Is your writing always so erotic?

Only when I get close to the bone

where passion rides in a simple conversation.

And talk becomes sex?

when your words 

pause.

Such a sight in the sky at 4:40 a.m.! A cloud erupting upwards into a mountain? No, an elephant. With a trunk spraying smoke. A mist of cornflower blue transitions into a deep sky blue, tinges
of rose gold at its base. A tree line silhouette stands firm as the smoke dissipates, the trunk shrinks, the elephant fades. Tulip poplars and black walnuts and pines and evergreens and red buds and dogwoods and sassafras shine through the haze.

sky clears and cloud calms
into a green rolling hill
I can climb today

(a haibun–my first. inspired by Geoff White’s beautiful For Ben on His Graduation, June 7)

the documentary put me to sleep
not its fault  I will watch again
not the point

one’s back to the world  this captured and lingers
letting my body respond in the way it must

to hold a truth that is emotion deep
and let it do its work
this is what remains after the wishes run out
and what is left needs to be organized into a form that can carry the weight of the mind flung further afield than originally agreed upon by the heart

Last morning
the dog oven
warms my feet,
the rough quilt folding 
like a tortilla. 

Much of it
centered on
technology 
and working
and then kids
and then dreams
captured or 
long deferred. 

I return home
through curtained rain
and reflect like
a remote monk
or Schopenhauer 
on the little life
each day we’re given—
born in the morn;
die at twilight—
and ask myself:
Was I worthy? 
Was it worthy?

I’d gone out for a breath of air, and had no call to be there, when I saw a friend, idling on the walk,

So, I sidled up to him and I uttered, “Hey there, Jim. I think we really need to have a talk.”

His eyes got a hunted look, as his head affirmed and shook, “We sure do, let’s step inside, kind sir!”

My hopes were now aroused as into the public house, we entered, as did our thirsts.

Before I wander too far about, I should perhaps here point out, that Jim owed me money which I’d loaned,

And I’d been trying for a while to re-collect my pile, I had visited, written and I had phoned.

He seemed a master of the dodge, I had been to where he lodged, and his landlady always said he was away,

“But he’s such a conscientious lad, any doubt you might have had, I can vouch, he’ll be back just any day.”

I thought perhaps I knew the cur, a wee bit better, you know, than her, as I had known the chap since we were back in school,

Even then he was always busted, and anything to him entrusted was disappeared…by golly, I was a fool!

Oh well, but I digress, though I’ll pause to confess, the thirst was on me and I sure did want a drink,

So, I waved the barmaid over and I counted out the stover when she returned with two glasses, quick as a wink.

This barmaid, the buxom dove, with whom half the patrons were in love, she surely was an artist in her craft.

Efficient, and generous to a fault, though her affections could not be bought, she could leave her suitors feeling oh so daft.

The other half the bar, they were in lust, though their desires, they were a bust, her love was squandered on a clerk across town.

Now wait, where was I going? My conundrum I was showing and it’s time I swing this story back around.

We both raised our pints to toast, than began to josh and boast, oh, how the stories flew, I’m telling you!

But as I neared the bottom of my glass, I smiled at Jim to ask, “Say old friend, I guess

you know what’s due?”

He smiled at me and beamed. He did recall it seemed, but then he lifted up his hand and said “Two more!”

Before I could restate my case, appeared  the barmaid’s smiling face; she had two lovely foaming pints there to be sure.

She sat them down and turned away as Jim cried, “My god! Look that a way!” And as I turned I heard my glass shatter on the floor.

I don’t know how he moved so quick, or did his disappearing trick, but when I turned back, he was out the door.

And a busboy with a towel, stooped and blocked my way now, it seemed to all have happened in a flash.

With my pants all flecked with foam, I was wishing I was home, and wondering if I’d ever see my cash.

In Jim’s hasty retreat, it seems I’d again been beat, I still owed the pub our last 

pints of stout.

I paid up and I tipped, and my replacement pint I sipped, as I relaxed into my seat and all my doubt.

prowling dark streets 
startled by the 
sudden moon
she sees her own death 
in the camera lens 

the best sunrises
are the ones you weren’t sure
would ever come