We buried her uncle in Phoenix, as the saying goes. A memorial service for Roger, the favorite, cremated and sealed in a vault. There were palm trees and Canada geese and cousins galore, an avalanche of emotion for the love of my life. On the way home we learned that another uncle had died, this [...]
healing
The baby powder may be ancient.
My wife was admiring the moonlight shining through the clouds. A half moon, she said. I could have told her. For whatever reasons, my emotional energy crashes on a half moon. Usually I want to light myself on fire and jump into the gorge. Fortunately this involves getting out of my chair and I have [...]
Looking for the verbs
The palmist was known to me, the adult daughter of someone I knew as a crazy damn poet and writer in Austin when I’d hide out on weekends from my teaching in Wharton, where the sheriff had a deputy park in front of my house and opened my mail, about the time when the KKK [...]
Yes, I’m wearing braces. Me and the two youngest are the only ones alive today.
That’s how I had to answer the phone when Dad was still on active duty in the Air Force. Even my mother did. For his part, when I entered the house in Tucson the night before he died, all he could manage from the bed was a softly croaked “Johnny…” and that was all I [...]
So many flowers in the terrible high desert this year
What if it’s all nonsense? What if there’s nothing to be afraid of? What if the past doesn’t matter? What if it doesn’t exist (how could it)? What if everything is conjured? What if you don’t have to do anything? What if it’s all emotional? What if there isn’t a “right way”? What if anything [...]
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