Category Archives: Uncategorized

In March 2020, obsessed with the platanes, or plane trees that lend magic to the roads in southern France, I organized a series of poems and pictures about their disappeance.  Covid derailed the presentation of the piece— the series languished. … Continue reading →

Sunday on the cusp of August in the countryside should be long, should feel endless.  At midi, noon in France, a stillness sets in that is both awesome, in the classical sense of the sun’s strict justice, and dauntingly hot.  … Continue reading →

Say her name. Dites son nom. Say the names of Jewish children — more than 4,000— who were taken 80 years ago this weekend from Paris apartments in the 9th, 10th, 11th, 20th arrondissements. They were separated from their mothers, … Continue reading →

If this is Western civilization in decline, I’ll take it. On the one hand, France is in free fall; on the other, the effort of every moment to hold it together, to prop it up with baguettes as support! Thus … Continue reading →

Those endless questions pull the bobby pin out of reality; the willies,  blues, bad infinity even the “shining truth” of politics —nothing but a question all stars in our flag become fifty questionsall past and futures held down by a moment. … Continue reading →

Things incandesce.  Glow with heat, break into flame as a water glass sitting on the edgeof a sunny table will alight  and you’ll find this small burning thing wanting— wanting — as prayer, as silence of the answer.   So the doubleness … Continue reading →

These are dark times,Open the window, the sun shines today for 15 hours 10 minutes.   And windy, a piece of lettuce is blowing off my lunchplate. Gesundheit, we say to the sneeze heard through the open window. On my summer reading … Continue reading →

In spite of myself, my resentment that they are rats with tails, that they lounge in my chaises longues and massage themselves in the rims of my flowered pots, I have been admiring squirrels. Such looseness; such fearless sense of … Continue reading →

Light on the ledge of my lidsor is it the sill’s seepage?From the trees, cacophony the birds, no doubtthough I doubt —a circus, pieces of a gambling game being turned – clacking and sparring,castanets, bingo. The Creator as croupier? Each element in … Continue reading →

We all came from mothers: we have something in common.Our first act almost unspeakable hurtling towards bright lights, causing our Other shrieking pain.Mothers let us off the hook — it wasn’t really our fault —the pea-green stuff was cleared off, we sucked … Continue reading →