Browse Topics

Portraits

The self-portrait is one of my first photographs.

The picture of my grandmother was taken two days before she died. The children on the wall are me and my sister; the picture in the middle is my grandmother, when she was twenty-one.

Martha

Martha is talking to me quickly: she needs another doctor. This one won’t give her the proper medication. She has not been eating well; it is too difficult for her to get out in the snow with her broken foot.

Sunbeams

But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here — the extraordinary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.

Annie Dillard

The Pulse

He is in the pulse, pulsing, pulsing. He is where he belongs, where he is held, so loved. Why did he ever fight this? “Ever have I loved you,” not quite a voice, but he hears it, knows it.

Farewells

An old porch swing, a birthday gift, an even half-dozen

The Written Word

Writing words on paper is particularly arrogant. How presumptuous to believe that words on paper can capture meaning, freeze life, hold it for even a moment.

Letters Unsent

Dear Frank,
You always liked it short and sweet. Here it is: Don’t sleep and sigh and move around on your cushion in the zendo. It disturbs others, and is conspicuous and self-centered.

Selected Poems

Backlighting

Alice’s husband was a man constantly in motion, and now that he has returned as a blue jay he is not much different. If anything, he is more nervously energetic than ever.

Old Man Alone On The Golf Course In Winter