Sometimes I love
an opening line,
flashing brilliant,
glorious annunciation,

but more often
it is the last line,
final exhale of words,
that grabs me by the throat

choking tears
from my surprised eyes,
like lights
coming on at the close of day, 

illuminating the bridge
to sleep, and to dreams
that are...

As the summer days wind down,
the sunlight slices shadows
across the hay-baled meadows,
and ferns curl up, brittle-brown; 

as summer waves its goodbye
the monarchs ascend like kings
on their regal, stained glass wings,
catching currents wafting high;

as summer gimps to its end
the turtles scrabble...

Awhile back I spent a few nights in my hometown, Indianapolis. (Apologies to some of you I didn’t see…I always have to make hard choices, as I have friends on the eastside, westside and all around the town!)  When in Indy, I always plan some time to visit my parents and...

Sunday morning after
one of many parties,
my parents hung-over
from boozing too hardy,
spoiling plans of mother's
to take us on a hike;
she, spiting my father,
fried chicken through the night. 

Crisp the day in autumn
and paths where turkeys run
were golden as Dad marched
ahead silent, sullen,
in...

Human effort, “elbow grease”, isn’t enough to save our souls.   However, human effort can produce wisdom for a person or a community or a country.  But it’s a certain kind of human effort.  It is the effort to push the ego out of the way, to strive for...

Trading her nest
of taffeta and tulle,
laying her buzzed and peach-fuzzed head
on crisp linen
hospital corners.

And pinned to a gurney by a tangle of tubes
carrying a slowly dripping chemo cocktail,
pried open by a surgeon's scalpel,
as it probes for cancer
in her fragile frame.  

She rises, a...

 “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on."         
                                        From...

When I was a youngster, I twisted my ankle often.  We spent hours running in the open backyards of our suburban neighborhood, and uneven grass could trip me up.  After years of these occurrences, my ankle developed a weakness.  I can twist my ankle walking on an uneven sidewalk...

“Death…is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon:  it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.”  C.S. Lewis

There has been a lot of death around us this...

Our son Court came running up to us at the church coffee hour.  “Mom! Dad! Can I have some money to go to Taco Bell with the other kids?” 

Every Sunday after church a gang of teens and tweens from the youth group would gather and head out on the five-block walk to the local...