“When I began writing poems about my parents’ deaths, which happened three months apart, it was difficult to write anything. It was especially difficult to write grief poems and want them to be…

“It all began on a tennis court in the late 1980s. I was co-editing a magazine for a Greek hotel chain and, since we were writing most of the articles ourselves under pseudonyms,…

“For weeks, now, I’ve been merrily scrolling through Facebook Marketplace for things my business partners then have to go fetch for our booth at The Rock House Antiques. The latest ‘thing,’ a snowy…

“I used to be more grace-filled than I am now. While I was serving as pastor, there were many times when I had to put aside my hurt and anger with parishioners who…

“’The only place in the world that nothing has to be explained to me is the South.’ I don’t often open a piece of writing with a quote from Woodrow Wilson, but there…

“How do we face the dark realities of the human world? As the distance between how things could have been and how they are actually going widens every day, how do we bear…

“More days than not, in class we’d just talk about stuff. Mr. Burns would often start the lesson by telling a story about his family. It could be about his wife Ellen, or…

“This conversation is muted by soft gray clay walls of an enormous hole that’s soon to flood and then turn into a lake. On this summer Sunday morning, the mustard yellow track hoe…

“While I do appreciate the sun-ripened fruits that line my breakfast bowl, my worshipful awe stems more from Sol’s drop-mike nonchalance. As Galileo said, while Sol keeps his eight planets in line over…

“The me that is me eats cheese and wishes there were more chocolate in the gorp. The you that is you fixes on the only point you cannot reach, a messy hike over…