Charlene gave it to him. The same Charlene who scrawled across two pages in his high school yearbook. I tease him and call her “If-Our-Love-Is-True-Charlene.” He laughs and crosses his arms and scratches them like he does when he gets embarrassed. But he still wears it in spite of the holes that have unraveled. He’s practical like […]
Still Saturday Going Still – Or Not
I read the MRI report, so I know what he’ll say. No torn meniscus. ACL graft is intact. (Actually, he says he’s surprised at how great it looks after 15 years–back when he told me I, a 52-year-old woman, had the knees of a 20-year-old.) Extensive areas of cartilage loss. Extensive degenerative change. In other […]
Rockabye Baby
My two-year-old daughter was missing. I’d been sitting in a lawn chair under the Georgia pines that summer morning while I watched her play in the driveway and must have dozed off again. I ran around the yard and through the house and back outside calling for her—not too loud because I didn’t want to […]
A Found Poem for Megan (repost)
Sometimes when you’re sandwiched between crises and you’re going through it without your mother, you just need to come out and play a little polo, find your balance with some red clover. Maybe slip your laptop into the red case and head to some sweet spot that sells veggies with a little turkey. Because that’s […]
Science and Culture Museum at MSU
Across the way, in the Main Gallery, hang several quilts from Southwest China. Because I used to quilt, I’m particularly enamored with how these colorful pieced and appliqued patterns help piece together the cultural heritage of the Chinese people, and intrigued at the way the threads of the past can patch holes in the present. […]
How to Face Winter with Hope
About hope and Haiti and purpose in later years.
Going Still
Still Saturday: Sit Simply
To sit simply To sit Simply For one sweet hour And notice All that is Unfolding In the Light of day– That is A fine, fine Thing. A reservoir within Each of us needs A reservoir within, Because life doesn’t happen On an average. It has its hurricanes And droughts, And lovely days. So also […]
The Staying Power of Scarlet
“Just hold on and suck in.” Scarlett grips the bedpost while Mammy yanks on the corset and cinches Scarlett’s waist down to 18-1/2 inches. Laces her up right tight. Molds her right to form. Bones bear down to bear her in. I think about bone that once bore down on another’s side, fragments that […]
Still Saturday: How To Do More
Even beasts of burden must be turned out to grass occasionally; the very sea pauses at ebb and flood; earth keeps the Sabbath of the wintry months; and man, even when exalted to God’s ambassador, must rest or faint, must trim his lamp or let it burn low; must recruit his vigor or grow […]
