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 →
Walt Whitman reportedly said that he wished his early work could be dropped into oblivion, well, ditto that, Walt. I believe the only reason that most of us high school kids had our work published in this sweet little journal, Mosaic, was that we were brave enough to submit. Okay, that's the only reason my work... Continue Reading →
I just finished Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, his amazing autobiography. I have never read an autobiography. Or a biography. Or just about any non-fiction. Try as I might. Every new year's I renew my resolution to read outside of my favorite genres. 'Read non fiction, biography, essays, not just fiction and poetry,' I command myself.... Continue Reading →
"Move the shoes," Thom Sherratt told me. I was 25, newly married, and my husband and I were in counseling. We needed it. We used each other to argue with our own cast of demons, those that crept nightly into our dreams, born of one dysfunction or another, and most of them articulate, funny, and... Continue Reading →
I can't say that I remember the exact moment it happened, I mean it's not like your older brother just suddenly likes you after years of teasing and tricking. For some, sibling love develops very slowly. I do remember the night I noticed something had changed, and my hero, my older brother Pat, saw me as something... Continue Reading →
I grew up in Detroit in a big Catholic family in a big old house. I was the seventh child. We belonged to St.Mary's of Redford Parish. By the time I was in seventh grade, our school was integrated, or in the process thereof. The Parish and neighborhoods were changing. Blacks lived next to Whites.... Continue Reading →
Let’s build a super Wal- Mart’s on Main Street in the heart of 'Merica Mom & Pop’s stores close we’ll breakfast on nachos redefine patriotism: nobody comes, nobody goes. Willaby wallaby woo an elephant sat on you We’ve all heard the secret to Wall Street: mix greed with fear, remove humility, turn lead to gold,... Continue Reading →
pocket poet 