It’s the lopsided charm
of this day’s superlatives—
the shortest day,
the longest night,
which for millennia
provided power
to the metaphor
for hope to console us
with heavenly promise
that peace will return
as easily as morning light
washes over dark stone.
(Winter Solstice, December 21, 2025)
It has been several decades, at least, since I read Eliot’s Four Quartets from beginning to end in one sitting. But since the poem came up in a conversation a couple of days ago, and Lisa has gone out of town, I read them out loud to myself in one go. It is an amazing work of art: time, faith, God, identity, sense of place, abstract while being incredibly precise in concrete details which fold back into the abstract. The usual allusions to everything in world literature and religion, but so subtle and fast it becomes as if you are reading about Jonah, Arjuna, Charles the 2nd, and many others for the first time. And such a magisterial voice and a musicality which lifts the reader to intellectual heights before they realize what is happening. When, 30 years ago, I read The Quartets for a class on the Modern long poem, Walt Litz, my prof, described it as “philosophical poetry, not philosophy as poetry.” If you haven’t read it, and want something deep, but not as daunting and dark as The Wasteland, then you should read it. It made me think about the first time I heard Beethoven’s Ninth, or Handel’s Messiah all the way through. And if you have read it, then it might be time to look again. I remember reading once that different poets often speak to you differently at different times of your life. The Four Quartets speak differently now than they once did. “My words echo/ thus in your mind.”
(December 16, 2025)
As in a Bruegel painting,
all the exquisitely-rendered
details occur unnoticed,
for the most part, lost
in the vast panoramic
rituals of this life.
It doesn’t matter,
so much,
where you look,
but that you see
the bits that are born,
bloom, then die
every moment
all around you,
and that you
are a part
of it all.
(May, 20, 2025)
The rabbit nibbles
fresh clover through the spring day.
The dog’s ears prick up.
(April 9, 2025)
In that moment, she danced,
as in a snow globe:
the late afternoon sun dazzled
the air in raindrops
still slowly falling from the walk way
overhangs of the ornate railings
on the buildings in the French Quarter
near the St. Louis Cathedral
where the wet streets reflected
the now unrelenting blue sky.
(April 7, 2025)
Despite the despots,
despite the collapse
of oceans’ currents,
despite the anger
flowing through the streets,
the iris push up
though the garden mulch,
and roses burst into bloom.
(April 6, 2025)
I finished “Bewilderment” by Richard Powers last night. It was a lovely disturbing and heart-rending novel. Awhile back RFB read The Overstory by Powers, it too was lovely and disturbing, but not quite as sad. Where The Overstory was about trees and the destruction of nature and our connection to it, Bewilderment is about the destruction of life as we know it and ourselves. If you have read “Flowers for Algernon” you will recognize the strong allusions and parallels to that classic novel. (If you haven’t read Algernon—what is wrong with you?) In addition to the end of life on the planet, Bewilderment is also about the relationship between a father and son after the loss of the wife/mother. If you haven’t read The Overstory, you should read it. Bewilderment is also great, and a bit shorter.
I finished Prophet Song by Paul Lynch over the last couple of days for my book group (RFB). It is hard to put down, even when you want to look away. An intense, disturbing read. Great lit! Ireland turns toward fascism and civil war. The story follows Eilish and her family as she struggles to keep her family intact and survive. I was paranoid inside of the first 30 pages, and stayed that way to the end 275 pages later. I was always expecting the worst. So many echoes of our current political situations, as well as genocide around the world. I imagine it will stay with me for quiet a long while. Read it. Seriously.
like notes in a tattered Stravinsky score
starlings stand on taut electric lines and
murmur about the secrets of the world
as if a sheet the wind has snapped free
from the line out back they lift as one
and shimmer across the crisp morning sky
(December 5, 2022)
The bees are dying—
Beauty and Truth of Nature?
Who can save us now?
(October 25, 2019)
The Seine flows
endlessly
around us.
We sit on the tip
of the Ile de la Cite
as if on a boat’s bow,
sailing up the river.
The sun shines,
like a promise,
after days of cold rain.
We drink a decent Bordeaux,
eat fresh pate smeared
across chunks of ubiquitous baguette.
Notre Dame looms
darkly behind
in its medieval bulk.
We are in love, as we
are still forty years later.
Nearby,
above a former morgue,
is a memorial
to the two hundred thousand martyrs
handed over to the Nazis by the Vichy
for deportation to the camps
forty years before we sat happily
oblivious to all but the beauty
of that one Parisian afternoon.
(September 19, 2019)
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