The house is on fire—it’s a big house, at least three stories. In this recurring dream, the attic is filled with furniture and other valuables I must rescue before the house burns to the ground. Sometimes to save what's trapped in the attic I must squeeze myself throu… Read full post »

 It's Otis!

Not suggested by anyone in response to my earlier plea (correct me if I'm wrong), but Randy is happy with the name, and I'm so glad.

It's his dad's middle name and pays homage to the dearly departed Otto by having the same first two letters. There's … Read full post »

It's been seven months since my friend Randy's boxer dog, Otto, left us for the place that good dogs go. I don't have a dog myself . . . I have two cats, a Siamese fighting fish, and a ball python (who I hope is temporary).

I prefer Randy to have the… Read full post »

In a past life, I taught writing at a state university with an open enrollment policy. Part of the gig was evaluating the work, whether it was a basic, plodding five-paragraph essay, a short story, or  a poem. Invariably, at some point, someone would ask: 

"BUT ISN'T… Read full post »

A cold day—the forecast for more snow,

A man and a woman are walking:

They know what they know.

The woman is older—she knows what she knows.

The young man walking beside her is passionate

to know what it is that she knows.

In their heavy coats, they scrunc… Read full post »

Dear Municipal Collector: 

When I parked my car in the parking lot to do business in the city, I had one quarter in my pocket. With 23 minutes already showing on the meter (Lot 01, Meter #01029), I figured one quarter would give me the extra hour I needed.

Unfortunately, when… Read full post »

It was our birthday

or Christmas. Bar mitzvah,

graduation, a special occasion

--it doesn't matter which one.

We wanted to tear off the paper,

and have it be perfect,

just what we always wanted,

however did you know?

We wanted to swim out

far and deep,… Read full post »

Yesterday I was standing on a kitchen counter, scraping 30 years of accumulated grease off the top of a kitchen cabinet in a rental condo I'm remodeling, and I fell. I'd forgotten that the ancient trash compacter supporting one side of the countertop had been removed and nothing was underne… Read full post »

THE VIREO 

It is a puzzle how we happen here,

wrapped in a single blanket, talking low

until at last the morning light appears

uncurtained through the dirty window's blur.

Now all the talking's done and we both know.

It is a puzzle how we happened here.

The empty… Read full post »

 1969

When my mother died three years ago, there was no funeral. At age 85, she had few friends left and was the last of her siblings to go. We weren't close with our cousins, so it was just me and my brother, Brian . . . and I knew… Read full post »

Something just like the light spot you see just off center in this brain, except smaller, showed up on my friend Randy's MRI about six weeks ago. His primary doctor sent him to a neurologist. The neurologist didn't see the tumor on an MRI taken two years earlier, so it a… Read full post »

THIS IS THE LONGEST I've gone without posting since joining up last February. I'm not exactly sure what the reason is for the lapse, because it's certainly not for lack of things to write about: 

          My 20-year-old daughter, adop… Read full post »

While going through old papers, I found these words, and it seemed to me I had found real poetry. I broke the lines for sense and breath, created the stanzas, and added titles that seemed to capture the train of thought, however broken. The words are exactly as my father wrote them--includi… Read full post »

Deborah Young blogged Study in 21st Century Teenager and, having one of those myself, I could not resist . . .

Teen dyed hair pink.

Teen displays flags of Kenya and Germany (runs cross country, studies German)

Teen leaves cross country clothes on floor. Act… Read full post »

Arghhhh!

Mary Elizabeth Williams put up a post about shark poetry, Live Every Week Like It's Shark Week. I'd like to give her a big, wet kiss for putting poetry on the front page. 

She links to Poems for Shark Week at poetry. org.  I encourage you to go… Read full post »

I love Mad Men, so doing this  . . . well, it was just more fun than humans are allowed to have. I also created a demure image of myself in capri pants, having coffee with Betty, but for some reason, that image won't upload. I take that as a/… Read full post »

JLee Davis asks, "Are you happy?" I answer no, and that's the truth. But so is this.

I am floating in a little mudhole of a lake after driving across west Texas in an unairconditioned car in the middle of summer. Families are gathered on a spit of trucked-in… Read full post »

Summer, early morning, grass still wet
and webbed by spiders, I painted a house,
helping my brother lift the wooden ladder

off the truck, spill cool streams into cans.
White paint went on approximate and pure,
and as heat lines struggled of… Read full post »

It's been great having you OSers read and comment on the poems I've put up, but I'm going to take them down in the next couple of days.

The reason? In the process of getting some poems ready to send out for publication, I discovered that at least… Read full post »

When I woke up on the ground in Potomac Park and rolled over in my sleeping bag, it took me a moment to realize the lub-dub I felt was not my heart but helicopters overhead.

I’d ridden in the back of a U-Haul truck for twelve hours with 20 other/… Read full post »

It was boring, my father begins, and
It was usually snowing. He pauses,
as if he half expects it to begin storming
right there in the living room, whipping
the wreckage of letters and pictures up
into a real winter squall. Then it all
spills out--days on the train from Michigan,
his ship rolli… Read full post »

          The only problem
        with Haiku is that you just
        get started and then

          ~Roger McGough

Haiku are okay, but th… Read full post »

OTTO THE BOXER DOG collapsed in the garden yesterday and was taken to the small animal hospital, where he lived briefly, long enough for me to get there and say goodbye. He passed away peacefully in my dear friend Randy’s arms around 1:30 P.M. His age is unknown, since he/… Read full post »