Category Archives: Uncategorized

Wording in the Rain

Finally it rains. Slapping and paddling the thick leaves; gliding down (d)rain pipes to be spit out onto recumbent weeds, filling puddles that I see mixed with the mesh of my screen window.  Puddles like a running woman, arms outstretched, hair … Continue reading

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Age, Relatives, Lo-Lee-Ta

My dad used to say, at age 65, I still haven’t decided what I want to be when I grow up. My daughter used to say, around age 5, I miss my childhood.  Traveling in their heads, forward, backward, time moving … Continue reading

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Slanting

Who knew, at the bend,a long slant sun would meet me, we’d eat a burst of tomatoes at night, already in shadow, a wall of sound, sonic cricketslike monks in saffron robes  lined from here to the mountains,soft, soft their silken … Continue reading

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The Past, Fellow Traveler

Sometimes the past is pressed against the present, or another present is present. While traveling in Europe you feel it like a veil of wind on your skin.  You scratch the surface, the past rises up through the transparency of summer.  Sometimes … Continue reading

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Homer texting from the islands

Cycladic villages – how is it that they never get dirty?  In Athens, age drips rustily down the walls; on a Cycladic island, the white of village houses is brighter than white, beyond pigment, beyond age. They are like sugar cubes … Continue reading

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Simone Weil: Happy Beachgoer

“The sea is not less beautiful in our eyes because we know that ships are sometimes wrecked by it.  On the contrary, this adds to its beauty,” says Simone Weil, French philosopher in a poetic mood.  She’s right: the endless surface of … Continue reading

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How to Break the Ice in Paris

People suffer and throw themselves into the Seine. The buildings have scars which grow lighter like our skins. Shop women roll their cat eyes jealously,hearing we’re American.   But what provocateurs they’d be, their loving presentation of breastset like cake batter inside a bodice,the body … Continue reading

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70 Rotten Swans

I am borrowing rotten swan to put at the top of my rotation list of favorite images.  It’s the British poet Alice Oswald’s concoction: In her book Falling Awake, “Swan” observes her own wondrously devolving construction as she hovers above herself.  In … Continue reading

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Waiting for June

A high-backed, slatted chairas throne in a long-stemmed garden. A city beyond it with glass, suits, revelers:It changes by the hour. Cars bead the bridge, a laudableorganization if only we knew what it was. Here, in a garden between houses,the … Continue reading

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Ezekiel Does Memorial Day

Someone snapped the light switch, and suddenly it’s summer.  Suddenly people are having fun.   The question mark of an existential figure that walked the streets alone, toting laptop and phone — he’s been replaced by friends and families walking in public … Continue reading

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