Parenting, it is argued, is most difficult when your kids are young. When the likelihood of their choking on a cigarette butt found on the ground at the neighborhood spring festival is high. And there are those who believe that parenting is most difficult when your kids are older. And the likelihood of their smoking... Continue Reading →
We're metal, we're 'Mericans. We mine it, we make it, we drive it, we drink it. We're metal. We have it in our teeth. Our joints. Our jewelry. Our music. So when they told me I had toxic levels of metal in my blood: mercury, barium, and lead, I said, "Toxic?" I am not toxic.... Continue Reading →
My Dad Kneeling in Front of Flower Bed on Abington in Detroit I look for lilacs to steal or forsythia even lilies of the valley, those shy bells of fragrance any handful hanging over a fence in an alley along the sidewalk in this mountain town some forgotten flower I can take home each spring... Continue Reading →
via Daily Prompt: Acceptance Of all the things that have saved my life, my sanity, or at least brought survival into the realm of possibility when none existed before, acceptance reigns. And whether I was surviving a moment, a month, or a catastrophe, as in a really big lifetime blow, acceptance did the job of... Continue Reading →
Bear. I dream of grizzlies. Living with them, loving them, talking to them. Polar bears, too. All kinds of bears. They have appeared in my dreams so many times over the years I lose track. A totem? An ally? I don't know. I have dreamed that someone gave me bears to tend as I would my... Continue Reading →
If they weren't so darn beautiful, crooked, twisting, and popping out their little blue berries like a Christmas pie, the allergies that the Juniper trees give to me might be less tolerable. Awww, nope. Just kidding. Completely take that back. Beauty aside, Holy Juniper! Intolerable. Achooo! I don't care how miraculous and interesting they are.... Continue Reading →
It's Bridget's birthday today. So for her, I'll post something different. The opening of a short story: "Fold and Gish," a coming of age tale. Not about youth getting older, but older folks becoming alone. It's a look at the empty nest. I wrote this long before I had one, an empty nest that is,... Continue Reading →
My oldest daughter Riana was fascinated by numbers when she first discovered them as a child. Numerals actually. She had no concept, really, of what numbers were, no understanding of value or measurement. When she was a toddler these were words she knew and knew she liked. Funny, now she is teaching statistics, but then... Continue Reading →
pocket poet 