• MIND

    It takes so little to take you back. It takes no thinking but sensing to take you back.You catch an aroma of a fresh baked pie and you are thirteen and baking for the first time, apple with a lattice top for a parent soon back from the hospital. A song played in memory of…


  • SAVANNAH

    The morning clings to youlike a damp sheet, the foglifting slowly, a magnifierpulled away from the square,the live oaks edging into focus. You sit at the table, wipingthe crumbs from you reallydon’t want to know when,a steaming cortado waitingpatiently for the first bitesof the large scones onthe mismatched plates. In the background a cry,“vanilla soy…


  • UNUSUAL

    I recall it wasn’t as cold as usualthat early November evening, Iwas standing nervously on the small deckin front of the Indian restaurant.This was going to be my fourthfirst date of my lifetime, notsurprising in the abstract, unlessyou realize that put me on an averageof one every twelve years.Fast forward almost three yearsand I am…


  • PIGGIES

    I have to stop and wonder ifthere is a parent alive whohasn’t gently pulled on the toesof achild too young to objectand recited “this little piggy.”And of course most children gigglebut not for the reason the parentssuspect or hope, but at the sightof a large person turning intoa somewhat ridiculous child.If they could comprehend justwhat…


  • MOLDY

    Say what you will aboutthis modern age, beset with,well, it’s probably far easierto list what it is not beset with,but there are things from my youththat I do not miss at all.Like the copper molds that homeon the kitchen wall, one the shapeof a lobster, another an ornate ring.They were strange but reasonablydecorative items, but…


  • GOOD LUCK WITH THAT

    The fortune cookies of my childhoodwere far more interesting, or somy memory would have it.The cookies offered wisdomof the East, or so it seemedto a 10-year-old, but perhapsit was the same mumbo-jumboin the bulk print today, nowthat the cookies, which oncetasted good, unlike today’sorigami cardboard, werefolded by hand, and therewere no lotteries then, sothere was…


  • NONFAT CORTADO

    There was a time when Iwould steal away for an hourand sit in the corner of my favoritecoffee shop, watching people.There would always be students,fidgeting in a hurry to besomewhere for which they are latebut dare not face uncaffeinated.There was an older man,his white and gray hair an absurdversion of the Friars of old,the man…


  • THE EARL WAS WRONG

    I’m not a big fan of butterwhich is why I could neverlive in England unless,and I’m not willing to do it,I became a vegan and thenI could beg off I suppose.Why the English see the needto put a thin layer of iton each slice of breadin a sandwich is beyond me.And don’t get me startedon…


  • AT THE CAFE

    We sit acrossfrom each otherseparated bythe small tablethat teeters,her cappuccinolicking at the rim.My toes danceagainst hersand she looks upquizzically.I smile and reachfor her handtouching her fingersfeeling the fine silverof the rings on each.She pulls her handback and looksinto the richbrown sheen.I stare out the windowat the odd carlookingfor a spacein the overfull lot,then pullingback ontothe…


  • CABERNET

    I should pause for a momentand mourn the plump orbsvinaceous in the morning sun,torn free, placed in basketsand carried off to be crushed.But the cabernet beckons,its first sip telling the taleof the California summer,the oak having long forgottenthe tree from which it was cut,and I watch as the sunreluctantly retreats,a flaming farewell, the promiseof a…