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MINNESOTA
The night fully settles over northern Minnesota in the sky grows dark as the stars make their reluctant appearance. Peering through the tall grasses of the wetlands abutting the road 1000 stars are born and die in an instant only to be reborn again repeatedly, until they are replaced by the beetles that accompany the…
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JOSHU ANSWERS
Yesterday a small dog, walking its master down the block stopped and stared at you, as you stood on your porch. You stared back at the dog, eyes locked on each other, while the master fidgeted on the sidewalk, afraid or too bored to look at either of you. You realized this was just the…
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DEEP WITHIN
The finches sweep from bush to feeder in a gentle inverted parabola appear head high with a pride reserved for those who fly. The chain link fence is for them no barrier but a honeycomb of perches, full on a warm February afternoon, their song threatening to silence the heart of winter.
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ON THE MENU
The waiter we know so well tells tonight’s server that we are poets and she should ask us to order in iambic pentameter. We write him a limerick, which she delivers with a smile before returning with our wine and a pad to take our order. She seems somewhat sad when our order lacks rhythm…
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KEYS
He sits, suited in black, with 88 keys at his command, and we fall silent. He opens the lock of joy, the lock of sadness, the lock of elation, the lock of tears, the lock of laughter, the lock of darkness, the lock of light, the lock of surprise, the lock of compassion, the lock…
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ADAGE
You want to yell at him, tell him to stop, that it is too soon, that he is not ready, cannot be, won’t be for months to come, but you know he will not listen to you standing, gesticulating, imagining a stone in your hand, shattering the glass walls, the crackling, gaining his full attention…
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MORNING READING
You read the obituaries every day not only for the affirmation that you are not listed among them The key five words there are not only for the affirmation, particularly upon hearing the gentle man you liked, that you valued as a friend and craftsman is gone, but you didn’t say goodbye, that you thought…
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LE CINÉMA
Watching French movies you know why Hollywood seems less real than the giant letters stuck like pushpins into a hillside. Even in translation laughter remains universal but you begin to think in word pictures that have utterly no meaning le neige gris la belle chat la lumiere fantastique and you imagine dreaming in a tongue…
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SUMMER, THEN
For three days I was a short order cook a change from my table duties when the regular guy decided that a night of drinking didn’t end when the bar closed and broke back in through the rotting back door that was always next on the list of things to be fixed. The owner, my…
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WINTER MEMORY
As I stare out the window and watch the snow slowly build on the limbs of the now barren sugar maple, painting it with a whiteness that bears heavily giving the smaller branches a better view of the ground in which their fruit of the summer lies buried. I am forced to wonder if the…
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an old writer and his words 