For Chris Worland


Begin with a story, one you have
perhaps heard told several times,
one that has become a touchstone
from the teller's past. Remember
the story involved a double ...  [+]

or, wait, maybe before that
with Octopus Tree, our neighborhood
refuge, taken down by Mr. Daughtery
so he could put up a house none of us kids
wanted in the neighborhood, or even before ...  [+]

the family called it, the rowof planks nailed down to beamsthat crossed the rocky streamwe drove over on our way to GoshenChurch.  Sometimes the water trickledacross mossy stone, other times it ...  [+]

after Helen Frankenthaler's Mountains and Sea (1952)
Splashes of blue, periwinkle and cobaltwings lifting the image, bottomto top, and green, sageof the New Mexico desert,early spring mountains in ...  [+]

"When you write about your mother passing,"he says to me from beside her bed where he has spentthe night, "and I know you will, be sure to saylast night it rained, that the rain she asked abouteach ...  [+]

after a trudge on the icy path
through the sun-splashed woods,
we sit on the front stoop,
hatless and gloveless, drinking
glasses of cinnamon tea.
As we walked, we talked
how we both ...  [+]

Road Trip



My mother was born with the travel gene. It lay dormant until she was a young married woman, 21 years old, and my father was drafted into military service at the beginning of ...  [+]

When I heard my mother's voicefor the last time on the phoneI said I'd be there soon."That'll be nice, honey.  Bye."Then she stopped smiling, stoppedeating, stopped talking about the rain.Before I ...  [+]

Close the door, then down the steps from the stoop. Trudge up the bank, grab the skinny sassafras to pull me uphill. Feel the sap on my hand. Porch light flicks off behind me, though I don't hear the ...  [+]

I grew upwith them,the tracksand the river,coal trainschugging,tugs shovingbarges,bodies ofblack rocks.Deep whistlein the night,tangible as fog.Near the end,my mothernamed a trainthe saddestsound she ...  [+]