How arrogant to assume
that I'm free to be me,
that I am master of my fate,
scribe of my destiny.

My pride entices me to think
of my autonomy
as my divine prerogative
instead of enemy.

I did not make myself, have no
responsibility
for my own creation, still
presume that I am free;

but only in submission...

The quick brown fox of typing fame
Jumps over a lazy dog;
He uses letters as he goes,
All the letters in English prose,
While behaving like a frog.

A childhood game is fox-and-geese
As taught me by my father;
We'd make a circle track in snow
And cutting paths across we'd go
While chasing one...

The other day my good friend, Donna, told me of an encounter she had in the post office while waiting in line.  She and another woman in the queue were discussing online shopping and kindle readers, and the other woman mentioned that there was a woman in her neighborhood who gives out books...

She warmed me while in my bed I nestled,
Not quite a woman, nor a little child,
As fraught with insecurities, I wrestled. 

With soulful eyes and gentle disposition
Her sojourn in our midst was comfort mild;
She offered me her love without condition.

She grew me up, brought solace to my heart,
...

 You made your choice;
         I made my choice.
                    Your choice did
     not make me choose to love
 you less, but if I choose to question
 you about your choice
   ...

I.

The sheets are ironed flat
and warmed in an effort
to make him "as comfortable as possible";
the procedure is routine,
though not his routine, nothing like,
and on the gurney he knows that there is
nothing more that he can do, that nothing
that he's done so far is adequate
to the task ahead.

II.

If...

Here’s my late contribution of a Halloween poem.  Boo!

Who mourns the grim mortician,
That dour, sour presence?
So humorless, refusing any
Mirth at things unpleasant. 

So trained to keep a somber
Look at death's unpleasantries.
Who cries in his crematorium
While donned in widow's...

Poet Mary Oliver wrote, “I am not a traveler…I do know the way to the grocery store, and I can get that far.  The simples of our lives:  bread, fruit, vegetables.”

That is me in a nutshell.  I am a micro thinker, living in a macro world.  I am consumed and...

I’ve been journaling all my life.  But over the years my journaling has taken different forms.  For awhile I would read scripture and then rewrite the verse in the first person, putting myself into the prayer of a psalm or into the story. 

Over the last few years, my journals...

A bunny sits sunning in the early morning dews,
The chipmunk flits and darts from under two canoes,
A rooster is calling us with cockle-doodle-dos,
And plaintive is the song of mourning doves' coos.

The dogwood barks, and the cowslip moos,
The weeping willow sobs with loud boo-hoos,
The sanddab sits...