It’s spring, the time of irises; and today, for many, it is a day of resurrection and rebirth. That’s why I want to share this short poem by American poet Louise Glück, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020. The Wild Irises (1992) explores the transition between suffering and renewal. The flowers voice both the anguish of dormancy and the astonishment of resurrection, serving as a...
This time of year during this still-wintery month, when the clocks have changed and I’m often up early and at my desk while darkness still grips the sky, I may be rewarded at dawn by a dramatic display of color and contrast, perhaps a painter’s dream, so quickly come and gone yet reminding me the dark will give way, the world may not be as bad as it seems, and even if nothing else shines my way...
You say you have the February blues, induced by the winter browns and grays and whites, the flat palette and the breath-stealing cold and the stinging, relentless wind, and for a while you can sit by the fire and read a good book and work on your puzzles and cook comforting food, but you begin to stir and can’t simply run the clock until spring, you have to stare down the season, but you don’t...
Another set of lyrics that need to be set to music. I’m playing with the AAA-BBB-CCC-etc. rhyming pattern and trying to disguise a theme. You’re lovely tonight in my favorite blueAnd then you do the thing that you doBreak my heart I’ll always be true Oh special one, my endless devotionLost like a boat adrift on the oceanDeep in the haze of your magic potion Not made for each other but...
The hottest actor these days seems to be Timothee Chalamet, and his latest film is the frenetic Marty Supreme. The film follows swaggering, twenty-something, table-tennis hustler Marty Mauser, a prodigy from New York’s streets who is attempting to raise enough money to travel to Japan to compete in a world championship tournament. Chalamet is at his best in a role that showcases his talent and...
Lyrics: KleinMusic: Aronowitz Coming Over Coming over to your placeWhatever the consequenceCan’t wait a minute longerSitting on this fence Coming over to your placeUnder a clever pretenseMight have left my life thereUnless that’s too intense What happened to our special daysEach passed in luminanceSaid we’re meant for each otherOr was that just coincidence Coming over to your place, whatever the...
In this dark moment in our country’s history, stained by a corrupt administration that lies to, threatens, extorts, and punishes its own people, that cleaves divisions among us, that celebrates bigotry and cruelty, that instead of serving people it cuts services to people in need—within this anxious moment, there is still sublimebeauty, there is October. Is the difference only that one is human...
I’ve been enjoying the highly structured form of poetry called the Villanelle. Here’s a new entry. You can also read Villanelle #1 and Villanelle #2. My desire is to plant one more treeAn oak or maple that adds a ring each yearThough under its shade I will never be For my children and theirs I bequest tenderlyA vibrant magnolia or dogwood souvenirMy desire is to plant one more tree...
I planted two hazelnut saplings. You need at least two for pollination purposes. It takes 3-4 years to begin bearing fruit. Each season, I prune and shape them. One tree grows steadily; one lags. I risk digging up and moving the struggling tree to a location with better light. I water it every day. It survives the shock of transplantation. I protect the trees with cages. And this year, their...
Scorchy July is now behind usSummer is halfway throughOpen your mind to August Shadows become a bit more robustThe days have an angled castWilliam Faulkner wrote The Light in AugustLegend says people feel more lustIn April many babies are bornSomething in the air in August It’s a time when people can combustWatch Pacino in Dog Day AfternoonIt takes place in the heat of August If you’re...
I walk into this view and greedily soak in every color and texture until I’m drunk on beauty, cool sand beneath my feet, demure waves rippling onto shore and out again, sun spraying the sky pink and casting golden upon the water, a solitary bird my companion, the horizon and the tree line the extent of my world. I want to appreciate this moment completely and I also want to take a photo for...
I must have been six or seven years old, hopefully not nine or ten. Our family was at Crystal Beach, an amusement park located on the shore of Lake Erie in Ontario. We went there once every summer, having earned ride tickets based on the grades we got on our report cards. My older siblings were going on the Magic Carpet, a walk-through funhouse with crooked rooms, funny mirrors, moving walls...
Mother’s Day is just around the corner and I’m sure you know a mom who loves to read. What better for a mom than a page-turning family saga? Now through Mother’s Day, my novels In Flight and The Suitor are available on sale for only $12! That’s right, hours of reading pleasure for your favorite mom. Doesn’t she deserve the best? Click on the cover images and order your copies today—you’ll have...
In my continuing effort to support our only local theater, the Spectrum, that screens independent, classic, and cult-status films along with first-run mainstream movies, we went to see Sinners the other night. What a crazy, highly entertaining fusion of Horror, Western, Musical, Period Piece, Black genre, and Thriller. It sounds like it can’t work. It worked! Ryan Coogler, who directed Black...
Winter felt long and imagine my pleasure seeing the first brave flowers of spring, these snowdrops stretching and opening between a crack in the rocks. I was so excited I wrote about it. And then visited another harbinger of spring: rabbits. Those darn bunny rabbits ate my pretty flowers down to the bone. “Curse you, dastardly rabbits!” In an earlier era, we didn’t have a rabbit problem. We had...
