Sting-Rays and Summer Nights - 1974
Elmira, 1974 We shouldn’t have been that far from home. That’s what I understand now. But that summer the air was thick and bright, and Mom said, “Just around town,” which in Lincoln Street language meant anywhere the road kept going.
3:13 a.m.
At 3:13 a.m. the night sharpens. Even the dark feels awake. The house holds its breath.
On Almost Beginning
One sits and reads, and the hours pass, and this passing seems not loss but a kind of staying. - adapted from Virginia Woolf’s notebooks The library was not a building but a condition sustained by attention.
And...
And is the word I use when the truth won’t fit cleanly. Family and friends. I needed both. I still do.
Prayer for 2026
Let us pray first for steadiness - not triumph, not ease, but the ability to stay when the ground feels thin.
The Grammar of Staying
Midwinter, 1980–81 The cold had a grammar then. It conjugated the body into ache and wait, into not-yet. Doorways learned my outline. Cardboard kept the minutes from breaking apart.
Proof That the Meek Endure
There is nothing mightier than the meek. - The Twilight Zone, The Night of the Meek An Hour Where Goodness Won I learned wonder in a small bedroom on Lincoln Street, where the light from the television was brighter than the streetlamp outside and the world made sense for half an hour at a time.
The Whistler on Harris Hill
Spoken by One Who Didn’t Listen People around Elmira tell the story different ways, but it always starts on the north side, where the Chemung drags slow through town and the hills decide who they’re going to notice.
The Ferryman Waits
Not all who wait at the threshold mean to enter. Some wait for you to step out. Fog thickens...congeals - the way dread settles when it chooses a host. Only then do I notice the lake breathing again, its exhalation brushing my skin like a hand returning from earth with something to confess.
October in Stockbridge
A New England reflection We came where Berkshire whispers dwell, To walk the streets where silence fell On painted doors and windowpanes, Where autumn’s breath through white walls strains.
A Fireside Carol
The wind outside begins to wail, a snowstorm rattles roof and rail. But here within, all calm and clear, I sit beside the fire’s cheer.
Quarter Nights & Greyhound Dreams - 1986
1986 was a year of rust - and prayer. I worked two jobs, three jobs, six days, seven if the Lord looked the other way. Didn’t rest, didn’t dream, just kept on like a broke-down Buick with a cough in its soul. That old '63 LeSabre - Blue as my mood, fading like hope - her grandma gave it, God bless her - and we rode it on fumes, on faith, on three dollars of gas at a time. Three bucks. You hear me? That’s a couple gallons and some change, back when gas still showed mercy. We rolled slow, so the needle stayed up, and the money didn’t run out…
Fiddler’s Green
T he Legend of Fiddler’s Green Fiddler’s Green is a long-standing military legend describing a place of rest and reunion for those who have completed their final watch.
