The presence of you makes me whole 
As you stroke your clay skin,
Your profile like an earth mother's.
Your daughter with the long limbs that stretch across a desert
Calls to you from the outside in words I do not understand,
Yet in a tongue that all of us know and find solace in,
Like the reassurances of the ivory-skinned mother to her two chalk-haired girls
That this bench will do fine, the top bench is too warm,
Yes, too warm dear ones,
Do you think so mother? Oh yes I do, dear one, I do.

A young boy scans the landscape of female forms,
Of grandmothers, mothers and sisters who remind him
Of something ancient beyond living memory that has no explanation.

Shapes, forms, tones, sounds, moving, waiting, whispering
As the steam rises and our healing brings balance to the universe
In this space from which we are all born.

Since the 13th century the sauna in Scandinavia has been a sacrosanct place where the peace may not be broken.

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.