Plugged In!
I am finally and hopefully able to send out announcements of recent postings after a two-month hiatus due to a malfunctioning “plug-in” that wouldn’t work in my new server. I …
On the Trail
Walking in his moccasins I felt a pain shoot up my leg. I tried to shift terrain, find smoother ground, a grassy place rolled flat. I shook my foot and …
Celebrating FRESH
To celebrate the second issue of Fresh, the new literary magazine edited by J. C. Walkup, Buffy Queen, and Penny Morse, I will join former NC Poet Laureate Fred Chappell …
Desert Beauty
Where water hides divorced from shimmering air, and plants stand sentinel within unbounded space,… (The remainder is deleted, because the poem is under submission.)
Collegiate Peaks Forum Event
In May 13 and 14 I gave two presentations on “Pathways in Reconciliation” for the Collegiate Peaks Forum in Buena Vista, Colorado. Located in the valley east of the Collegiate …
Poem for Mothers
You yielded to creation’s flow in trust, in hope, Emerging uncontrolled cries of pain and joy radiating from your core. Each task accomplished, left behind in …
Photographic Memories
My reflections on memory continue, heightened by preparations for my talks at the Collegiate Peaks Forum next month. Here’s another poem in that series. Old photographslaid out upon the table,still …
Darwin and Restorative Justice
The evolutionary perspective that Charles Darwin generated over a century ago continues to refocus, reframe, and reconstruct our views of everything from God to humanity, history to biology. Perusing the …
Cosmic Wonder and Parochial Idols
On our recent trip to Florida we spent a day and a half at the Kennedy Space Center and Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge. Some might think it ironic that this …
The Gift of Ninety
We have recently returned from a trip to Florida to celebrate my only remaining Aunt’s ninetieth birthday. It was a festive occasion in which she danced and laughed exuberantly. Her …
The Trail of Tears Association
In 2003 Sylvia and I retraced, by car, the main overland route of the Trail of Tears, starting northeast of Chattanooga and proceeding across Tennessee, western Kentucky, into southern Illinois, …
Memory and Reconciliation
I have been thinking a lot about memory and reconciliation lately. It’s nothing new, since Red Clay, Blood River is an exercise in memory that leads to new forms of …
Peacejam Memories
This week I made some presentations on South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to 8th graders at the nearby Waynesville Middle School. Most of them are heavily involved …
Obama’s Parliament
In discussing our country’s Constitutional crisis last week I focused on the tension between our ideal of deliberative argument and conversation over against the realities of factional partisanship fueled by …
Lie, lay, lain, laid, lied
Beset for years by the popular destruction of English grammar (“lie and lay” being the bete noire) and dumbfounded by the sorry saga of John Edwards’ scandalous behavior, I wrote …
Earth Speaks in Haiti
All our careful plans and fervent hopes are devastated by one brief shudder in earth’s crust. In the face of such appalling suffering and destruction, an offering of words seems …