Category Archives: Uncategorized

Bastille to Puritan Village: Strange Magic

Each time, after countless trips, still strange magic.Hours ago, we were eating croissants in the sun, looking at the soft green column of the Bastille, the genie de la Liberté, golden wings aloft, still leaping.Today I wake up to crisp carpeting … Continue reading

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Back to Scroll One

[Some smart-aleck loser decided to hack my little poetry site — hope he got some jollies! We’ve been out of commission for a while. I am back-posting this piece, and will jump to the present presently!] How amazing to be … Continue reading

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The Waste Land is a Wasteland is a wasteland

I take the Waste Land as a day-to-day thing.  When a dismal, cold slate gray rain falls from a slate gray sky, when it looks like wartime London, need we say more — T.S. Eliot’s 1922 poem, celebrating its centennial, … Continue reading

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Old Soul/Young Soul

Back in the day when I was a kid, it seemed cool to be an old soul.  Whoever first enlightened me, when I first heard the phrase (to be or to have?), I don’t recall.  Being an old soul seemed … Continue reading

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Dvorak’s Cricket Folk Dance

Classical music concert by the sea.  Sun hot on our arms, yet the air makes us shiver.  Little cabin, doors thrown open.  Unaccustomed voices — women and black composers.  Accustomed voices: Dvorak. Simultaneity: Crickets. These are not usual times.  It … Continue reading

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Saving Joy

Summer can be poetry without the words.  A sweet peach cuts through time and puts you right in the everlasting camp of the gods.  A tomato is a love apple, pomme d’amour.  The spume of the sea drenches with spent … Continue reading

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A Drop of Radiance has Touched the Everyday

As a traveler, I understand;you, a traveler, too, must travel, we mustsay good-bye,but a drop of radiance,a grapeof imaginary sun,has touched the blind blood of everyday… ——  Pablo Neruda, excerpt from “Ode to the Third Day” Neruda, were you writing about a day of … Continue reading

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Here, the Heavy Glitter of Now

“There is another world but it is in this one,” said Paul Eluard.  This one, here, celui-ci in the heavy glittering mid-August summer.  Sometimes the tree has one cicada that shatters the insistent sun.  Sometimes the chêne has one cicada … Continue reading

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Driven — Life of the Plane Trees

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

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Noon Justice

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

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