Winter 2013

It’s All Grace If I could live my life again awakeThink of all the chances I could takeI’d love with all abandon just the same‘Cause that’s the game . . . . The seconds whisper…

Winter 2012

Roads, Songs, Words I believe in love and dangerI believe the truth is strangerI believe that fear is much too strong I believe the best will find meWhen I leave the rest behind meOut on…

Winter 2011

What Matters One morning I arrive at her table [in the Orvieto marketplace] as Tomassina is taking cherries, fat as walnuts and chastely pink, from a pasta strainer and placing them on a small, unpolished…

Winter 2010

Yes. “’—Night is drawing nigh—‘ For all that has been—Thanks! To all that shall be—Yes!” “To say Yes to life is at one and the same time to say Yes to oneself. Yes—even to that…

Winter 2009

Transfiguration  “The broken are not always gathered, of course, and not all mysteries of the flesh are solved. . . . . Loved ones whose presence once filled us move into the distance; our eyes…

Winter 2008

Dear Good Friends: I write this 2008 fall evening from a new address: 2225 Alpine #2A, Helena, MT 59601.  It’s a 1,000 square feet of simple, one-floor condo space, four miles south and east across…

Winter 2007

Night Stars over snow, And in the west a planet Swinging below a star— Look for a lovely thing and you will find it, It is not far— It never will be far. Sara Teasdale…

Winter 2006

WE DIE    for Carl Sagan We die despite appointments and feuds, while our toddler, who recently learned to say No, opens and shuts drawers a hundred times a day and our teen braces for…

Christmas 2005

Passages “Life is a long walk forward through the crowded cars of a passenger train, the bright world racing past beyond the windows, people on either side of the aisle. Strangers whose stories we never…

Christmas 2004

My Wishes for You   Nights too starry for fear, Noons like a golden chime, The confident gift of a year, To open one day at a time,   A tree from the garden of…