The Courage to Be Mortal
Five years ago today, my friend Laurie Foley died. For the last five months of her life, we talked to each other a lot. I wasn’t feeling well myself and mostly tried to sleep on a couch in my office so I wouldn’t disturb John, and she was in the …
65th birthday list for Johnny
I know I joke a lot about Johnny Depp. And I write about Johnny Unitas a lot. And Johnny Appleseed. And Johnny Cash. But the fact is that there is only one Johnny. My Johnny, Mr Brilliant, the father of our two amazing children. And today is his 65th birthday. …
Love your broken tooth
I don’t know the names of my teeth. Do you? Oh, sure, I know “Front Tooth” and “Back Tooth,” but that’s the extent of my dental lexicon. So, I can’t tell you the exact name of it, but I broke the Tooth- Beside- The-Front-Tooth in half a few weeks back. …
What will it take?
Today, I feel the claustrophobic feeling I had when 9/11 occurred, when Katrina hit, when the tsunami swallowed people up, when I first toured Auschwitz as a teenager. It is the weight of knowing, the knowing we must all hold. Once we know, we can’t not-know. If my town were …
Missing and forever missed
Do you know exactly what you were doing and where you were twenty-eight years ago today? I do. Daddy is missing and forever missed.
She had me at “cow town”
Oh, my. I love to shop on Etsy. Real artists making art. I’ve made a conscious commitment to buy handmade. My dream is to create a small shop at 37day.net that will include only handmade objects that relate to my blog and book (did I mention I’ve written a book?), …
Poets sound out over miles
Elephant Love Fourteen thousand pounds Shift silently Over ruts worn deep By the lure of water. A behemoth link In the tail to trunk chain, Slinking under night’s cover Toward the wide, gentle sea. Each massive foot, Distinct as a thumbprint, Hints at treetops and weather, Speaks of dry and …
Poets help us wish harder
Breathe-in experience,Breathe-out poetry.-Muriel Rukeyser I fervently pledged as a teenager that I would always remember how I felt then, that when I became a parent, I would remember what life was like then, what mattered then, what I worried about and laughed at then, and what I cried over then. …
Poets explain history, fear, love, and moats to us
History It’s like this, the king marries a commoner, and the populace cheers. She doesn’t even know how to curtsy, but he loves her manners in bed. Why doesn’t the king do what his father did, the king’s mother wonders— those peasant girls brought in through that secret entrance, that’s …
Poets tell us what we knew about ourselves but didn’t know we knew or rejected as too true. They also, graciously, allow for renewal.
A Purification At the start of spring I open a trenchin the ground. I put into itthe winter’s accumulation of paper,pages I do not want to readagain, useless words, fragments,errors. And I put into itthe contents of the outhouse:light of the sun, growth of the ground,finished with one of their …
