For Mary Oliver

I put my trust in cities Brick and glass and window washer, each climbing like a sort of secular ivy aching angularly, always arcing heavenward. Tonight I am wearing boots my wife bought for me, on a train quiet enough for me to hear my own whispers because everyone who is usually here has […]

Dumpster Fire: A Parable

This will not be the year I thought last year shouldn’t have been he said he could hear the heart-ruminations beating against her temple from the inside out. I will walk more, march more, sell more, buy less, build more, meme less, write more. I will tear down, build up, use up, reduce, reuse, resist, […]

Borders

I. They fought like hell over that border, I’m told. The Tigers and the Free Staters Hating each other to death, shoot on sight. These days, you can find the rumpled shirts and smoke stained fingers of their aging children nubbing down the old wooden pencils, playing KENO at the Twin Cities Tavern. You cross […]

Saint Stephen’s Cathedral: An All Saints Day Photo Essay.

In the shadows of tall buildings Of fallen angels on the ceilings Oily feathers in bronze and concrete Faded colors, pieces left incomplete. –“Cathedrals,” Jump Little Children I fell in love with Stephensdom, Saint Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, today. Here are some photos to show you why.

Thin Places: A Letter Home

I first heard the term “Thin Spaces,” when I was in Divinity School. Eric Weiner’s New York Times Essay from a few years back perhaps best describes the concept: Travel to thin places does not necessarily lead to anything as grandiose as a “spiritual breakthrough,” whatever that means, but it does disorient. It confuses. We […]

A blessing for an adventure

May you travel light Especially when it comes to worries. May you breathe an unfamiliar air in Like the gift of a long lost friend May you meander just enough to know The place you’ll long to discover next time May beasts and children and saints meet You in the coming, the going, and return. […]

The Philosopher’s Bed Time Story

“Tell me about the way We used to live.” A cross between philosopher And child, this one is. “Moral Geography it is, then,” He’d grumble back, “The pleasure of the sound of ice in the whiskey glass Before my father had a bad thing to say. The question of whose fault it is when the […]