Am I too old to see the fairies dance? I cannot find them anymore. –Langston Hughes, from “After Many Springs” That the light would last forever. That a silent abracadabra was the appropriate blessing to be conferred on even the grayest new morning. That a dog was both a lantern and a life preserver. That … Read more
The King deputized for the Queen at many sacred functions, dressed in her robes, wore false breasts, borrowed her lunar axe as a symbol of power, and even took over from her the magical act of rain-making. His ritual death varied greatly in circumstance; he might be torn in pieces by wild women, transfixed with … Read more
He took her somewhere. She went willingly. They went together. It wasn’t exactly as if she were lost, although that description would work for the sake of melodrama or metaphor. She didn’t, though, have any melodrama left in her, and she no longer had any use at all for metaphor. Things exactly as they were … Read more
to be a discoverer you hold close whatever you find, and after a while you decide what it is. Then, secure in where you have been, you turn to the open sea and let go. —William Stafford, from “Security” What you cannot hang onto you must let go of –that is the principle on which … Read more
Saturday afternoon I was approached outside my house by a down-on-his-luck character who told me he was trying to buy a used car over on Pillsbury Avenue and had found himself fifty bucks short. He’d taken the bus from St. Paul to look at this car, he explained. He’d just gotten a job in Maplewood … Read more
The giving of thanks: lip service is easy, but really feeling it, truly giving it away, expressing it from your heart, that’s more difficult. Where do you even start? Any fool with a roof over his head, a car to drive, a job that pays the bills, food in his cupboard and refrigerator, a sense … Read more
Show me a man who can’t trust, he used to say, and I’ll show you an untrustworthy man. It was lies that broke his spirit and drove him out of the arms of…what? America? The human community? The lies of culture and commerce, public and private lies, political lies –virulent dishonesty propagated by sociopaths, a … Read more
Time is a sputtering lantern, a bruised child, a gray, flat-faced man with fists of concrete and legs like pistons. He has it in for dogs, which is one of his many cruel and inexplicable character traits. Misunderstood and misrepresented throughout history, gussied up and dumbed down, the snaggle-toothed bastard is frequently outfitted with wings … Read more
I can tell you from unfortunate personal experience the sort of thing you can expect if you allow yourself to fall under the spell of a poison toad. It’s not good, that’s for damn sure. You’d think, I suppose, that any reasonably intelligent person would know enough to steer clear of a poison toad that … Read more
Easy world, you gave it once– please quietly welcome it back, that hand. –William Stafford, from “Going On” …what is it we are all doing, what is it we are about, pray tell? And why are we gathered here? –Raymond Carver, “All My Relations” What the hell do we want? What is our heart’s desire? … Read more