• DETOUR

    He always wanted to take the scenic route home, it didn’t matter if it took longer, he probably preferred that and he rarely commented on the scenery. It was more that he didn’t want to get where they were going and the scenic route was guaranteed to take longer and with luck they’d get lost…


  • NORMALITY

    The herons don’t seem particularly happy even though their mating season is over, for the wood storks have taken over the shrubs on the island, their babies endlessly describing their wants and desires. Even the anhinga hang back, staring down, knowing that soon enough the little ones will fledge and life in the wetlands will…


  • EXPECTATIONS

    Nothing unexpected happened today. That, in itself, was entirely unexpected. On this and certain other days, you have to expect the unexpected. When that doesn’t happen you are left to ponder why what was logically expected went so unexpectedly wrong. Nothing unexpected should happen tomorrow. At least anything unexpected happening would be a truly unexpected…


  • VIOLIN

    We sat at the table, sucking the last of the djej from the bones piled along the edge of the platter. “I played for seven years” he said, “under Tilson-Thomas and later Rudel, bad years those, I sat two rows back second from the stage edge.” He was unremarkable, forgettable until he nestled the violin…


  • ASKED AND ANSWERED

    Only the ducks remain, and they aren’t saying. Ask a Muscovy where all the ibis have gone and he will say, “good riddance, they’re ugly and get in the way.” Ask of the pelicans  and they will remind you that now there are more fish, and they’ll be back eventually, but things are much calmer…


  • RESEARCH

    She is a small woman dressed in white, save for black platform slingback pumps and cherry red eyeglass frames. She hunches forward in her seat seeming as though she might collapse, pouring over tables and graphs – biochemical research papers. You measure the depth of her attention by the frequency with which she  pulls single…


  • In any half respectable pub in Galway, and in Ireland the county of place hardly matters, when enough pints have been passed, and night grows thick, even such as I, claiming to be part Irish, claiming two left feet, can feel the ceili deep within, and step out on the floor to do what I…


  • MY REFLECTIONS

    Each morning I stare into the mirror and see the same white hair and wonder who I will be today and what I was on all of those other mornings. I ask the mirror what life has in store for me this day but it only smirks, never answers as if it knows something I…


  • HAIKU TWO TANKA

    A clouded night sky hide and seek moon chases squirrels      Rain holds back      In deep laughter Wind whispers trees sigh in response Morning awakens A heron poses standing on a single leg We watch jealously


  • INTO THE SOIL

    When did we stop being of the soil and begin to fear it, to tell our children not to touch the ground, it is dirty when once it was only dirt, and we put it in our mouths, from time to time trying to drive our mothers crazy. She says if you are going to…