The Blue Hour
arrives. The late light turning on me draws the day closer, the east meadow beyond a grove of birches, some animal stirring at the edge of sight. Peering out, my mind grows sharper. Let it happen — release, release like the wind riffling through the trembling ferns after two days of rain. In places only whispering birds fly to, everything collapses into green shadows, my eyes adjusting to the faceless dark. I remember a time being afraid of it, even when I was most hidden. Now it feels safe, the way the perfected dark lets it all pass without comment, marking each thing. What I wanted...
Read MoreHousekeeping
I never saw my mother in a bathing suit like the other wives on campus, the boarding school where our fathers taught. The summer of ’76 stuck to our tanned skin in the boredom of long, humid days in PA. The radio reported record heat waves that year. On Saturdays we were barred inside until the house was “redd up,” a command in her Pittsburghese to clean up. She knelt down by our side on hardwood floors, a bucket of Murphy oil soap at her hip. Row upon row of washed out photographs of our ancestors in the hills of San Martino peered down from the mantel. Yet this was the...
Read MoreEdinburgh Rock
red and white peppermint twirled to a length that could be licked or broken in pieces my brother wanted a stick brought from Margate with its beach of castles donkey rides and buckets blankets on sand and long slow waves the colours smell of seaweed saltwater linger in memory overlaid by the taste of Edinburgh...
Read MoreThe Old Mill Disco on a Greek Island #2
The hip old mill of the disco stops grinding the wind into power. A soft nothingness descends like a million moths filtering through cobwebs and cobwebs of moonlight, leaving the anesthetized eyesight bobbing like duo lanterns on local boats. In the gray allegiance of pre-dawn, an inventory of tackle, nets, and floats is visible now the night is gone. Then the pill of the sun is thrown and the titration point is behind us, irretrievably clarifying things. Darkness is exchanged for daylight in a parenthesis of clouds white as snow, as the trackless frost on a winter’s pane that once seemed...
Read MoreOn the Ferry from Martha’s Vineyard
There is a cool fire, one that is inviting to touch with a half-promise it will not burn you. I’ve seen it in the eyes of kindness once or twice. But I saw it or something like it too when I rode the ferry from Martha’s Vineyard back to Massachusetts after a busy day galumphing and happy when the sun was lowering. Suddenly the sea turned into a horizontal blaze and I into a child on a merry-go-round wanting to clasp the brass ring. At least that is how the ripples of the sea attracted me with their powers of enchantment at about 6:40 just as the day was thinking about turning again into...
Read MoreComings and Goings
My own are scattershot and the neighbors’ flicker and stutter like the lives of diners peering at menus within little squares of light on a passing train. How can I help picturing myself up above in Seat 17A looking out at clouds, myself the size of a baby’s thumbnail on that passenger jet still lifting on its way to Kansas City. Right now I see Steve’s living room lights at 6 a.m. on Sunday, so I wonder if he, the neighbor who wears earphones when he mows, ever gets a day off, and if he is still Steve, the one I knew long ago, or someone new? And do any of them notice my empty...
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