I saw you through the tall trees like old men, leaves fallen, towering with their years. You were a diminutive figure with a tiny frightened dog that seemed to hide from me, running from tree to tree, like  a child hiding behind its parent's sturdy legs.

For so many years we had passed one another in this way. You with your speechless companion, I with mine. We were strangers whose nods to one another had become old friends. On some days when our ear phones occupied us we denied those friends a meeting, because we were wrapped in our music or in the news. On those days I felt the lost opportunity for the blessings of a simple greeting.

We thought things of one another, pictures of one another's lives off the trodden park path; rooms that we filled with our own imaginings. Mine were always of a place that was mild and tempered, where a frightened dog felt at home. 

One day you rushed toward me. I had been away for some time, and had longed for the bracing mornings in the park, where the mist on the lake rose reluctantly and the deer were like statues, hoping to go unnoticed.

Where had I been? you asked. You had gained an insight into some of the rooms of my life through my writings. You were concerned and embraced me. "I am fine," I replied, feeling the crows feet forming a smile. You seemed genuinely relieved.

Amid the barren trees our nods greet one another once again. Your dog hides, my dog sniffs. All is well, as this year, when I am grateful for this delicate thing we have fostered and kept alive together, draws to a close.

In celebration of the civility that ordinary people show one another every day. 

Where were you when the wall came down? 
When the woodpeckers broke the dam of un-freedom,
Or the Eastern hares hopped lost through Western cement,
Or the scholars watched with bewilderment as their frameworks fell like a house of cards,
When W for West had become V for Victory and the end of history was nigh.

Where were you when the wall came down?
When remembrance of other November 9ths had grown dim,
For a dark seed was planted near a beer hall in Munich,
​And later eyes looked askance as windows were smashed,
And children were taught to humiliate as freedom starved in closets and attics.

Where were you when the wall came down?
When, two days later, the veterans emerged in tears that never dried,
Poppies worn over hearts,
Commemorating young blood spilled for reasons few remember
And a grudging, indignant peace that wove its way through a century.

​Where are you on November 10th?

Thoughts on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Living in the shadows of another man's war, the downcast eyes long to meet mine, but are ashamed I might have to share the weight of fear.

Living in the shadows of another man's war, we walk together down a quiet, empty street at night, where the silence is full of snipers and the facades are smooth with the absence of bullet holes.

Living in the shadows of another man's war, a woman with emerald eyes and caramel skin, in a richly patterned Eastern shroud stuffed into a donated ski jacket, asks me whether this bus is going to a place she struggles to pronounce.

Living in the shadows of another man's war, the children in the seats ahead of me laugh in a new language, part mine, part theirs. 

I get lost in their laughter, the salve that soothes nightmares of mothers and children running from their homes with only one wish that turns other men's wars into my own. 

Written in solidarity with all people who dream of safety.

Sometimes all that matters

is the silver grass in the morning sun

the last rose of autumn that stays warm in the bud

the changing face of a leaf as it weathers life

a water pool that collects in the palm of a stone

the sky that waits patiently outside the window. 

Maybe all that ever matters is that we notice it.

In memory of the beautiful Sandra Carpenter.

Everything in its time. 

The joy and exhaustion of running after the first steps to stop them from stumbling into danger.

The gut-churning days of watching the self-same struggles tinted by a new time, which turns them into different struggles altogether.

The bridling of hope and anticipation so as not to overrun the emergence of a whole person's own path. 

The handling of parting with a smile of confidence while the heart aches inside. 

On my return, the dog waits on the terrace, the same but not the same. "Home is where you are," she says with attentive eyebrows.

Everything in its time.

On watching one's children spread their wings.

A bossa nova played and she perched a cigarette between her lips.

“Give me fire,” she said.

His cafezinho stood cooling on the starched white table cloth as he held his lighter to her cigarette, and then his own.

“Give me fire,” he repeated, smiling provocatively.

As he drank his cafezinho, he leaned his cigarette on the edge of an ashtray so that a single string of smoke danced toward the sky. But it was all in vain because the sky was gone.

The tree tops crackled, each leaf a cremated soul that fell to the ground and turned the red earth grey. 
Never again became again and again.

Less defacation will solve it. Children will solve it. Lighting another cigarette will solve it. Even a bossa nova might solve it.

Give me truth, not fire.

On the burning of the Amazon, a symbol of our conscience with the other forests of the world, in the beloved land of my birth.

Animals again, as we stood in packs and tended the hungry mouths and tired cries of our young.

Animals again, as we moved with purpose in fate’s sure hands.

Animals again, hunting in the shops and shelves of our survival.

Animals again, as we preened one another, purred and huddled together.

Animals again, as Gaia reminds us that we are one of many kinds.

Animals, biding our time to be claimed by the soil and the sea on this lonely planet of life, again.

On standing in the security lines at one airport or another. 

My hunt for the drugstore on the fringes of New York began at my inn with a request for a cup of tea which was unavailable because breakfast was closed and therefore I walked in the sweltering heat of a climate changed August ten minutes to Main Street where I stood at a traffic light waiting for the roaring SUVs with tinted back windows to protect the toddlers in richly padded child seats to stop and let me pass and eventually crossed the road into a town of organic cottons, love plants, and seared tofu where wholesomeness prevails and immigrants do the lawn-preening and landscaping and create the look of the nation though the President doesn’t want to look at them and a mother explains to her child with the melting ice cream that she cannot have sweets and presents right now only for her birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas but I still could not find the drugstore where I wanted to buy a kettle and some tea bags so I would be independent of Starbucks and then a nice lady looked at me sympathetically because I did not have a roaring SUV and said the drugstore is very far away over there at the deserted train station but good luck and finally I entered those doors under a sign that said Walgreens where I found my kettle and tea but where all the food is disorganized because everyone starves on takeaway and the lines for picking up prescriptions are long and I cannot find a cash register with no one who needs drugs and I see the media persecuted face of a child of a famous person on the cover of a magazine next to another magazine about climate leaders including Greta who is sailing over here and I wondered what she would think about ending up on someone's coffee table unread but finally I reached the cash register and the employee pointed her nylon nails at a sign saying that plastic bags were banned this August which lifted my spirits mildly and on the way home I learned this town was founded by shoemakers but now no one really needs sturdy shoes because no one walks that much except sometimes the immigrants and black people and a tourist who needs a kettle and some tea because breakfast at her inn was closed.

On visiting the outskirts of New York this August.

Hope is a voice clear and clean. 

Hope is lips red as cherry.

Hope is a magical white turban.

Hope is the eyes that see through the spectacles of women and the downtrodden.

Hope is when we can speak of hope. Let us speak of it.

Dedicated to four freshman Congresswomen.

Wind in the grass, everything seems as it once was.

Wind in the grass, was anything ever as it once was?

Wind in the grass, or shifting light on a million blades?

Wind in the grass, waves in the water moving on, the same but never the same again.

A reflection on Midsummer's Eve 2019.