Posts for June 15, 2025

Other kids might look at you 
with a certain amount of                                                                     side-eye
if you tell them that your dream when you grow up
is to be a secretary in an office.
But I have been fortunate to know 
many kind office assistants throughout my life,
people who knew everything,
fixed everything,
knew everyone,
and fixed everyone.
They were all as close to omniscient about their workplaces
as humans could reasonably be,
but too many of my classmates thought
that that job could only be
held by a woman. 
These friends did not measure
the desire to help others
even if that eagerness was balanced
with a biweekly disgust for Excel spreadsheets.
So I kept this ambition a secret
until I had seated myself at other tables
to feed other appetites,
but I always remembered these observations,
inclinations from my youth,
and I use them to motivate my interactions
and fill them with kindnesses that others will remember.
I may never be the amalgamation 
of administrative assistants from my past
that I had hoped to be when I was much younger,
yet I can still long for a meaning
that I build with people everyday.

First met you where the street met the
Alley, on a bright sunny summer day
The things I noticed most were
How white your skin was and your blue
Eyes, short stature and black curly hair, I
Remember you said, “She looks like my
Sisters and you were right I 
Did but I didn’t know that until much later
And I wished I had known it much earlier
Your sisters were so good to me and I miss them so

write something
write anything
write yourself present
write us all

free

.

(my great granddaughter
flew in from Texas today
to throw her arms around
my neck and wish me 
a happy father’s day)

Grief puts glasses on
a near-sighted man
and helps him clearly see
the beauty of life. Death 
could be the next knock
that comes to to door.
And yet…And yet
here is Penelope
rushing in with her news
of the best and worst of times,
as if it matters
and that makes life matter to me.
With Penelope
i have no bleak,
just a curiosity
to see what happens next 

‘

For my father

Raised in wealth
Big house in the Park

You played the corporate shuffle
Suit and tie, briefcase in hand

You kept things straight
Beside vodka martinis, with a lemon twist

The family was safe
We had all our needs met

Household repairs became Saturday routine
We worked together, father son

You were there when you could
Serving four children and a wife

An open hand that always gave

Whether to know you or myself
With deeper insight today

Let us embrace
As I tell you
Of my gratitude

Longevity.
Luck.
Vitriol.
Unjudging gravity, 
Convey your boatmen with patience,
Convey just enough information,
Not so much you’d obey
An order ordained 
By a force less
Than your own or
An element known 
To craft elegant guidance
On scrolls assigned to carry out
Every idea from eye for eye to why to
a man or a wolf would convince
Conspire carry out promote
CSI no the other it was
Law and Order as if
You didn’t already 
Have that one 
Covered..

 o.o

Glittery red and green

 gasped inside a darkened dew drop

On a fog soddened June evening

when I had nothing to say

He was his mother’s favorite child
who told her every morning she looked beautiful
who did chores without asking
who as a teenager heard voices

and he sometimes became violent
to himself or household objects
but more likely to throw you the finger
than a piece of gravel if he was agitated

His mother and father,
brothers and sisters fought his illness
his entire life to keep him home
where he could go outside anytime

and see the sky or walk
the gravel roads, pastures, and knobs,
plant raspberry bushes,
and eat home cooked meals

This time it was the favorite son
that his remaining siblings wrapped in quilts
to rest in a homemade coffin
next to a brother (my husband) and parents

We sang his favorite song, “American Pie”
but felt a kind of music dying
as the width of the family graveyard grows
in a field with room enough for me, a sister-in-law

Later, under dark clouds threatening rain,
I walked quickly across the field from the graves
toward the line of cars parked near the pond
and bunkhouse converted from an old school bus

but paused again to read the song title
my husband had painted years ago on the bus’ side:
“everybody knows this is nowhere”
and mourned again that nowhere else is home

Of home and hearth
and the pots and pans hanging in the kitchen,
the table and chairs where we drink coffee,
our days free of this hair splitting.

But now I fill cardboard boxes,
packing my heart in a plastic bag,
suitcases lining my insides.
It is another missed step in this journey
I thought would never end.

I feel as if I’ve been lost for an eternity—
trying to find my way back to something whole.
But maps deceive;
they do not speak the language of the soul.

I listen for a call—the sound of my name—
not from a voice,
but from the quiet pull of your presence,
guiding me without demand.

Others offer direction, persuasion, intent—
but you simply listen,
and hold the secrets I give
as if they were the softest treasure.

It is not your voice that leads me,
but the tenderness in your hands,
the steady rhythm of your care,
love made visible in small, sacred gestures.

I never dared to dream
that I could return
to something so gentle—
a place that feels like safety,
a place that feels like home.