He turned stiffly and with great caution. He meted out portions of his day with a butter knife grimacing as he did. He was an old man well before he’d earned it in years. But being an old man was… Read More ›

aging
Take a look at my life, I’m a lot like you
I’ve been practicing what it feels like to be an old man for years now. An old man with all the good parts, none of the bad. The pace that is measured, unrushed. Days that spill out like a cracked… Read More ›
As the yard began to brown
Green is the color of life, and for today I am wrapped in a quilt of it on grass and fern and hanging tree boughs. Brown comes next, it is already on the edges of the sword fern, the cedars,… Read More ›
“Between thought and expression there lies a lifetime”
In the early morning before the sun comes up we sit in the dark with a candle and our coffees and ask how the other one slept. Letting the dog out and standing in the fog, hurrying back in beneath… Read More ›
My old man pose
I ate last night’s dinner for breakfast, wild mushrooms in bone broth. I sat by myself in the nook chewing, contemplating the day. It passed without report. In the middle of the night the moon made the fog look like… Read More ›
How the house felt after the kids left for summer camp
Outside it was warm and the lupine stalks were bending down, some on their faces like mollusks gumming the ground but not making it very far, frozen mid-suck. The dog smelled bad, a telltale bad like she’d rubbed herself in… Read More ›
The long descent through the quarry
I got down on my hands and knees in the shower with a toothbrush and some baking soda paste. The web site said if the drain had a musty smell that was mold, but if it was more like a… Read More ›
Fifty-fifty clown
The crow’s wings are magician hands that flap and disappear through the swirl of animal souls and the gray marine layer of morning. The lake is gray too, ribbed by a breeze or by paddle boats, the same each day… Read More ›
Hello and goodbye
Everyone wanted to know how my hypnotherapy session went, including me. It took a while to relax because I’d hurried there from work and had to rub my eyes to make the GANTT charts go away. But when the meditation… Read More ›
What was left
What was left in Charlotte’s bowl wasn’t worth saving. But I ate it on principle, so it wouldn’t go to waste. And there was an analogy in that, to going back to my hometown for our annual visit, gumming the… Read More ›