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…]

O’er three years and fifteen, have you been mine.
Before this was darkness, empty all ’round.
You saved me from hell of my own design,
And soon to your side I chose to be bound. [continue…]

I was having a conversation with a friend recently, in which she made the comment, “Getting old is not all it was cracked up to be.” I totally understand the comment seeing as how I’ve passed the half-century mark myself. But then I started to wonder what aging really means. [continue…]

Well, my conversion to the Dark Side™ is nearly complete. I have signed up on Twitter. [continue…]