I Like Golf

 I Like Golf

It is challenging

mentally and physically.

I think when cited

that it was a good walk, spoiled

Well, if you wanted to walk—

…

A Good Walk

Golf is a fine walk

though one carries several clubs

for reasons unknown.

And occasionally strikes

balls into a new county.

…

The Game

I address the ball

With dignity and intent

The ball remains still

This is considered progress

Until my evil twin swings.

…

Nature

I enjoy golf most

When surrounded by green fields

Birdsong, calm breezes.

And the disturbing knowledge

my ball is out there, hiding.

Ready for Love

Ready for Love

 

Is it human nature

to lean toward the cliff’s bright edge

just before the hero arrives—

to stand where stone gives way to sky,

where the hawk circles its patient question,

where the wind lifts the hair from our faces

and whispers, not yet?

To mistake the storm cloud for an ending,

the falling leaf for a farewell,

when perhaps the world is only turning its weather,

asking us to wait for the rain to pass?

 

Every cliffhanger is a trail marker,

a small wooden arrow weathered by seasons,

half-hidden among the pines,

pointing through the green hush of the forest,

suggesting there may be a way through

if we give the path time to appear.

 

Sometimes the trail disappears beneath snow.

Sometimes the river rises

and makes us question the crossing.

Sometimes roots reach across the earth

like old hands reminding us

that even trees must learn

where to place their weight.

 

Yes, it is darkest before dawn,

but dawn is already loosening

its gold ribbon behind the hills.

The eastern sky is paling

like a flower beginning to open.

Good decisions ask for clear eyes,

a little logic, a little math,

and the humility to read the weather—

to know when the clouds are gathering

and when they are only passing.

 

A winter hike needs warm layers,

steady boots, and cleats that bite the ice;

the mountain welcomes wonder,

but asks us to come prepared.

The pines do not hurry toward spring.

The river does not apologize for changing course.

The glacier moves almost invisibly,

and still it shapes the valley.

 

Even a green fairway has its lessons:

practice, patience, the hush before a swing,

the small white ball lifted briefly into sunlight

before gravity calls it home.

The meadow does not demand perfection

from every blade of grass.

It simply keeps growing.

 

Willy-nilly will not carry us home—

yet joy is no less necessary.

Let laughter lift like birds from the grass;

let wonder move through us like warm rain.

Let presence be our compass,

hope our north star,

and love the fire we carry

when the trail grows cold.

 

One careful step, then another:

this is how the trail becomes a life.

This is how roots find their way through stone,

how rivers carve their names into canyons,

how seeds split themselves open

in the dark because something in them

trusts the light.

 

Outside, the earth opens its green book:

fresh-cut grass is a bright new page,

sunlight lays a warm hand on the face,

and soil beneath our palms reminds us

we belong to something patient and alive.

 

The garden teaches its quiet mathematics:

what is buried is not necessarily lost.

A bulb sleeps underground

while winter passes overhead.

Rain gathers in the hollow places.

Roots drink what the surface cannot see.

 

This is not cliché; it is elemental—

the honest arithmetic of breath and sky,

the science of roots reaching for rain,

the tide returning to the shore,

the moon pulling silver from the water,

the heart remembering it was made to grow.

 

So I will not leap from the story too soon.

I will not confuse the precipice with destiny

or mistake one dark season for the whole climate.

 

I will walk on—toward the clearing,

past the last stand of trees,

where the path widens beneath my feet,

where the meadow opens like a held breath,

where birds rise from the tall grass

and sunlight spills over everything.

 

There, beyond the bend,

the whole wide world is waiting—

green, sunlit, breathing,

open as sky after rain,

 

ready for love. 

Read the Weather

 Read the Weather

 

When every wind begins to smell of spring,

remember: thawing rivers still run deep.

A path may flower brightly at its mouth,

then lose its name beneath the tangled vines.

Now is no time to leave the compass home

or drift wherever easy currents lean.

Keep patience like a map within your coat;

read every bend before you choose the road.

Let questions be the stakes around young trees,

so roots grow straight when restless weather turns.

Test offered fruit by seed and season both;

not every orchard keeps the sign it wears.

And when the rain has spoiled the planned-out day,

set jars beneath the eaves and save the storm.

Plant what can flourish in the softened ground;

let loss become the water roots can use.

Hope is the seed that waits beneath the frost,

unseen, but holding April in its heart.

It drinks the dark and gathers quiet strength,

then lifts a green reply toward the light.

For morning comes to those who tend the dark,

who keep one window open to the east,

and greet the sun with hands already sown.

 

Back on the Rails

Enough of chasing sparks through a field of straw,
calling every flame a sunrise.
Enough of crowning noise as wisdom
and feeding every stray excuse.

The road is still there—
a black river under the dust,
its white lines like knuckles
pointing straight through the dark.
Put both hands on the wheel.
Let purpose be the engine,
let truth burn clean in the tank,
and drive.

Drop the foolishness like a rusted chain.
Leave it clattering at the crossroads.
You were not built to circle the drain;
you were built like a compass—
to tremble, to steady,
to find north again.

So rise.
Hammer your days into shape.
Lay each choice like iron track.
The past can howl behind you,
but it does not hold the reins.

Get back on track.
Not softly. Not someday.
Now—
with a spine like a bridge,
a heart like a drum,
and no more room
for the circus of excuses.

China, Beneath a September Sky

 China, Beneath a September Sky

On the morning of September 11, 2001

I folded shirts into a suitcase

and China into a list of names:

Beijing, Xi’an, Guilin,

the Yangtze, Chengdu, Shanghai,

Hong Kong bright at the water’s edge.

I imagined red gates opening,

stone courtyards holding imperial weather,

a wall combing the mountains,

dynasties breathing through lacquer and dust.

 

Then the towers fell.

 

Two planes.

Two towers.

Thousands who went to work

and never came home.

 

We tried to cancel,

but the trip was nonrefundable. So we went.

a door we could no longer close.

 

I remember the strange guilt

of boarding an airplane

when airplanes had become

symbols of terror.

I wondered whether courage was motion,

or fear carried forward.

 

Ten flights stitched us across the country,

shoulder to shoulder with strangers—

families, workers, elders, children—

and once, caged birds trembling beneath our seats.

 

I watched them

and thought about freedom,

and how little it takes

for the human heart to become afraid.

 

Beyond the glass,

China refused a single face:

vendors calling over silver fish and ginger,

silk glowing beside patched coats,

minarets and temple roofs, farm paths and neon,

old stones watching glass towers rise.

 

I bought black freshwater pearls—

a bracelet, earrings, a necklace—

less than a hundred dollars.

 

I thought I was buying jewelry.

 

I did not know I was choosing

something dark, small, and enduring

to carry home.

Before the Terracotta Warriors,

in their silent ranks,

thousands of faces

made by hands two thousand years ago.

 

In Xi’an’s Muslim Quarter,

steam lifted from lamb and cumin;

vendors measured the day in handfuls,

voices braided through the dusk.

I scrutinized those ancient faces

and thought of New York—

of families searching for faces

beneath the ruins,

of names becoming photographs,

photographs becoming memories.

I asked what survives us:

the face, the name, or the love that keeps naming.

 

In Guilin, karst peaks rose from mist

like dark brushstrokes on silk;

 

fishermen crossed the river’s pale breath,

 

their boats writing brief sentences in water.

 

In Chengdu, tea cooled beneath plane trees;

in Shanghai, towers burned against evening;

in Hong Kong, ferries combed the harbor with light.

Everywhere, life spoke in another cadence—

Mandarin, Cantonese, market cries, temple bells—

and the hardest truth was its continuance.

 

Markets opened.

Boats moved.

Children laughed.

Planes rose.

 

Life continued

with the unbearable confidence

of life itself.

I began to see that continuance

could be both wound and mercy.

 

Meanwhile, across the Pacific,

America was digging through ash.

 

Families waited for calls

that would never come.

Firefighters and police

walked toward the flames

while others ran away.

 

I was thousands of miles from home,

walking through ancient cities

while my country was learning to grieve.

 

But grief has no geography.

 

It followed me through China—

through Beijing,

across the rivers,

onto every crowded flight.

 

I returned with black pearls

in my suitcase,

but they were not what I brought home.

Home had become less a place

than the measure of what absence leaves.

 

I brought home an understanding:

 

an ocean can separate countries,

but it cannot separate human hearts.

 

The river still moves.

The markets still open.

The planes still rise.

Morning still comes.

 

That is not forgetting.

 

It is carrying.

 

We carry the names.

The families.

The silence after the noise.

The ones who ran toward the fire.

The ones who never came home.

 

We carry September.

 

I have come to believe remembrance

is not an anchor, but a compass—

it does not hold us in the past;

it asks what direction love will take.

And wherever we go,

it goes with us.

 

I left Hawaii believing

I was going to see China.

 

Instead, China showed me

not one China, but many:

red walls and river mist,

prayer and bargaining, silk and steel,

a thousand ways to enter morning.

I understood then how travel changes us:

not by answering grief,

but by enlarging the silence around it.

 

The Yangtze kept moving beneath us,

 

bearing silt, rain, voices, centuries.

 

I moved with it, though part of me remained

 

under that September sky,

I still ask what it means to continue

when the world has divided into before and after.

learning that to go on

is not to leave the lost behind,

but to carry them differently.

Voices Carried Forward

 Voices Carried Forward

On September’s first light in 1878,

when morning wires began to sing,

voices traveled over copper strands

and distance learned a different thing.

The boys who once had mocked the calls

fell silent at the sound—

for patience, skill, and steady hands

were changing what was possible, what could be found.

 

Emma Nutt, the first woman

to answer the telephone’s call,

sat among the tangled cords

where laughter once had filled the hall.

 

No cannon marked her entrance.

No trumpet called her name.

Just nimble hands, a listening ear—

and nothing stayed the same.

 

With every connection calmly made,

with every voice put through,

she helped a new world find its way

from one unheard voice to two.

 

Yet long before those ringing lines

had learned to cross the air,

in 1773, Phillis Wheatley

lifted words from silence there.

 

A young Black woman, carried far

from the country of her birth,

she answered those who doubted her

with verses of uncommon worth.

 

They questioned whether she could think,

whether her voice could be believed;

she answered not with anger alone,

but with the words she had conceived.

 

Her poems became a lantern

for minds that would not see:

a voice they thought could not be heard

spoke with its own authority.

 

Then came the years of marching feet,

of banners, grief, and flame—

of women who refused to wait

for justice to remember their name.

 

They walked through years of sacrifice,

they pressed against the door,

until the law that barred the vote

could bar them there no more.

 

The Nineteenth Amendment rose

in nineteen-twenty’s light—

a hard-won sign that women’s voices

could enter public life.

 

The ballot box opened new ground;

new possibilities could start.

Yet freedom, written into law,

still left too many standing apart.

 

And Shirley Chisholm stepped forward—

elected to Congress in 1968—

then sought the presidency in 1972,

refusing to accept a smaller place.

 

With unmistakable courage,

she kept asking, clear and bright:

Whose voice is heard?

Whose voice counts?

Who has a claim to civic light?

 

She carried hope into the struggle,

made courage into sight,

and turned a woman’s voice and vote

into a claim to equal right.

 

Now Wheatley’s ink and Nutt’s switchboard,

the marching feet, the votes—

their stories form a living thread

that history still holds.

 

Not every victory thundered.

Not every triumph shone.

Some changed the world by writing words;

some simply held their ground alone.

 

But every woman who stepped forward,

who answered, wrote, or fought,

left one more door ajar

to one more once-impossible thought.

 

One voice became another.

One hand reached for the next.

One generation carried forward

what the last had dared to protect.

 

So let September’s morning come

with memory in its breeze—

with echoes of the women

who made pathways where none had been.

 

For history is not a monument

of marble, stone, and steel.

It is every voice that dared to rise,

every wound that refused to heal,

every hand that opened what was closed,

every dream that would not die,

every woman who stood and said,

“I belong. I will not be denied.”

 

The wires still hum.

The pages turn.

The ballots wait for hands.

The torches still burn.

 

And somewhere, even now,

a voice is gathering strength—

finding courage in the voices

that carried hers this far.

 

The chain endures:

from Wheatley’s pen

to Nutt’s patient hands,

from marching feet

to ballots cast,

from one brave voice

to another—

 

across the years,

across the distance,

across every barrier raised,

 

a living song

of courage,

dignity,

and voices carried forward.

 

Down the Retail Rabbit Hole

 Down the Retail Rabbit Hole

A family-shopping satire

We packed up the children, the coupons, the car,
And ventured to shop—not especially far.
We entered for trousers, some socks, and a shirt;
We left with a headache, a leaflet, and hurt.

The sign said, “WELCOME!” in corporate cheer,
Then twelve smaller notices made nothing quite clear.
“For comfort and safety, please follow Rule Eight”—
But Rules One through Seven were “pending updates.”

We asked one young clerk, who consulted a screen;
The screen asked a chatbot what “family” might mean.
The chatbot said, “Thank you—your concern has been logged,”
Then froze with a smile while the whole system bogged.

The app needed passwords with symbols and flair,
A fingerprint, PIN, and a sample of hair.
It welcomed us warmly, then crashed at the till:
“For faster assistance, please reinstall.”

We queued by a doorway beneath a red light,
Where arrows pointed left while the floor pointed right.
A manager arrived with a binder of lore:
“The policy’s simple—except in this store.”

The children grew hungry; Dad studied the map;
Mom guarded the cart from a clearance-rack trap.
Each sensible question produced, by design,
A survey, a QR code, and “Terms” to decline.

“May families shop here?” we asked with restraint.
“We welcome all shoppers,” came back the complaint.
“But where should we go?” “That depends,” they replied,
“On which temporary sign has most recently dried.”

So downward we tumbled through jargon and spin,
Where nobody knows where the rules end or begin.
The rabbit wore khakis, a badge, and a tie,
And promised, “Your comfort is our highest priority.”

At last we escaped with one sock and a hat,
Three digital coupons, no clue where they’re at.
The receipt was six feet, the explanation thin—
And somehow, we’d signed up to shop there again.

So here’s to the household, still mostly intact,
Seeking plain common sense in a maze of fine fact.
If this is “progress,” then kindly take note:
The rabbit hole now has a loyalty code.

With daughters and sons in one family crew,
The fitting-room puzzle soon came into view.
Should Dad join the ladies while helping them dress?
“Consult Appendix Q,” said the clerk at the desk.

Mom needed one doorway, the boys needed more,
Dad stood like a bellhop outside every door.
One daughter cried, “Help!” while the youngest yelled, “When?”
And Dad checked the policy binder again.

“A family room, perhaps?” we politely proposed.
The clerk tapped a tablet; the tablet then froze.
“We had one last Tuesday, from ten until three,
But now it’s reserved for the store’s Wi-Fi tree.”

So husband and wife, with their boys and their girl,
Were routed through arrows that twisted and curled.
We came for new clothing; instead, we were schooled:
A family of six needs a flowchart—and rules.