What is it about children that makes a father adore them? [continue…]

I sit alone by her hospital bed —
The others are gone, the prayers have been said —
And look for a time at her ancient face,
The lines writ by years; a facade of lace. [continue…]

I wake to the dark. Twisting around to look at the clock on my nightstand, I slump back, knowing what the night holds in store, and just stare at the ceiling. A ceiling lit by the feeble green glow of the clock and the dim yellow street light that filters through the curtains and the cold Minnesota rain. A sickly, dreary light, entirely appropriate for the hour of the wolf. [continue…]

It was a tiny thing. A gold-plated romantic heart no more than half an inch wide, with a faceted red garnet mounted in the center. It hung from a necklace chain, also gold-plated. Most of the plating was worn off after years of hanging around her neck, eroded by her habit of reaching up to hold it. She had done that more often over the last seven years since her husband’s death. [continue…]

Brilliant blue in a half-cloud sky,
“Quiet air,” reflects the vane.
The world is lit by cleaner light
The morning after a rain. [continue…]

Several haiku-adjacent verses about the simple things in my life. [continue…]

I’ve been digitizing home movies from 8mm video tape, and ran across one from our 1996 vacation to see my parents in the Black Hills. On this tape was footage of a side trip we took to a threshing bee in Sturgis, South Dakota. [continue…]

Our lives gain value by our friends
And what those friendships mean,
Our kith and kin are emblems of
Those bonds that stay unseen. [continue…]

As I sit here at my desk,
Pushing papers to the side,
Think upon it’s mess grotesque,
Won’dring how it got shanghaied. [continue…]

So long ago I had a love,
My life, she played a part.
The woman was to me a dove,
Ere long she had my heart. [continue…]