What is it that this term truly means.  A war raged.  One that wasn’t meant ... to rage.  Mankind hoped the Great War, the war that had called so many of the world ... to come ... to die ... to leave so great a gulf ... 

Mankind

Some birthdays are ... so easy ... to remember.  Every four years ... my mother’s was Inauguration Day ... here ... in the States.  My father was an April Fool ... the world remembers his ... day ... still.

The birthday I married approaches.  15 April.  Tax deadline

First words I heard ... this morning ... 0400 ... BBC.

Children gone ... children hurt ... adults gone ... as well.

Once ... for a while ... this was my life ...

This morning as I hear the words ... these words ... every part

Always ... it is morning ... when familiar church bells ... ring ...

We were seven ... when we met.  Second grade.  St. Ann’s ... Neponset ... Dorchester ...

She lived almost across the street from the church.  I lived at the parish’s far end.  One way

would the words stand on their own ...   

first words ...

written words ...

for most of us ...

Sometimes perhaps, when one ... creator ... hasn’t perfectly understood the other, when one misses ... what the other sees ...

but ...

when the one

So many trains.  

Sometimes when we read something here, we respond in the moment.  Sometimes we can share that response straightaway.  Sometimes we can barely hold it ourselves.  Sometimes it reaches something still too raw.

So with this.  I’ll l

Given everything else happening in the world right now ... even here, this is so unimportant.  But ... in the moment ... it was a moment ... and it was hard to let it go.  All fears becoming one ... perhaps ...

Fear ...  Active Fear ...

“ I need to ask you if you fully appreciate ...”  or words to that effect kept floating through my mind when I saw a recent prompt.  Too many other emotions floated then for me to pretend to write a piece.

I had had the temerity to fall

“Write a poem and then draw a picture that will help us understand your poem.”

I do not remember how old I was or which nun spoke those words.  Was it seventh grade.  

I remember fear.  Draw a picture.  Draw.  Fear.  Fear.  Fear.

I

Only one word rises. 

Love.

How many hearts are holding you here.

Is all of life composed of layers.  How many layers came together yesterday.  “Innocence of a wedding day” I heard Simon Schama say.  The Bishop of London spoke to the now royal couple of hope.  All is cherished.  All possible.

Chaucer, a London poet, mad

A nonsense moment. Here. I need not to think about tornadoes for a while. They terrify me. When I was little, I thought they only happened in The Wizard of Oz. No one here has cellars. Go to a closet. I used to wonder how I would hold my

I have been writing this for days.  Weeks now.  Almost a month.  How much is mine to tell.  

Today I can barely find a word of news.  If I could hear it, could I really hear it.  I only want to hear ... what I want to

A friend asked to listen to a certain song.  Another friend played the song, and I listened to a piece I'd never heard.  At first I listened for the friend who'd wanted to hear the song.  And as I listened, I looked out on a rainy beach. As time went

20th January.  Always this day has been important for me and for my family.  Yet this year I almost forgot.  Last night I listened to news and heard a story focused on John Kennedy on one such winter’s day.  The story was focused on the importance of the speech

Yesterday afternoon, my cellphone rang.  Ordinarily I would not even know where the phone is, but a difficult call could come at any moment.  That’s the call I thought it was.  Well, no!  It was one of my former cherubs I’d taught at the school up the street.  

I have no idea what I’ve just seen.  Have you ever been sent a gift with no name?  

Late afternoon here.  Sun is heading to the horizon.  Feathery threads of cloud stretch across all the sky I can see.  Was not paying much attention to the sky. 

When you write and yours is the only voice, it is easy to be the one who was only good or the only one who knew pain.  Today marks the last anniversary of this month for me.  Last Friday - my mother’s death.  This Friday -my marriage to my

Mama.  

Today.  Your day.  Twenty-three years ago.  For the second time in two days.  Final this time.

Twenty-three years ago.  Blink of an eye.

Always you are here.  I see rainbows.  I create rainbows.  I feel you telling me that al

I realize that I am posting these pieces as much for myself as for anyone else to consider.  I want not to be caught up in the polarization of campaigning.  I want to take time to remember what matters to me and why and then let that and what

from September 19, 2009

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Some references in these pieces are a year out of date and may jar the ear of one who reads now.  Yet too much is the same.  Some things are better.  Some may improve.  Some may be brutally

Early last September I was so caught up in the hope for health care reform that I finally did what I often do to see where I am and what I am thinking.  I wrote.  By the end I had such a long piece, but I had clarified, at

I need a cup of hot chocolate now.  A cup, not a mug.  A cup so big that it will fill my hands as I hold it.  I need my mother’s hot chocolate.  I can see her at the stove pouring the milk into the saucepan.  Hood’s milk, of