Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 →

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 →

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 →

“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 →

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 →