

What Is Crooked Cannot Be Made Straight
A week ago, I set out for Cedar Point, about an hour north, to photograph birds. About halfway there, the banality of bird photography...


28 Days of Itchy Pants
I grew up in a protestant church tradition that valued not complaining, chin-up manners, correct posture, and constrained yawns while...


Rocks of the Wild Goats
Tomorrow I will head to the mountains. But today I am standing on Wrightsville Beach. The sun is out, the wind is cold. When the ocean...


Feeling Insomnia
“So, I hear you don’t want to take your meds anymore,” she said. Her face contorted with equal measures of disbelieve and ridicule. I...


Visions and Interrogatives
I am visited by the dead in my dreams; I speak to them in dreams. A friend came last night. He said nothing or little, and I had no idea...


Ambivalent Home
Given the Holy Family traveled around the time of Christ’s birth, it strikes me as a bit ironic that we seem fixated with being home at...


Negative Space
Daily, the sun blinks out of existence in the late afternoon. The winter solstice nears. Darkness expands, reaching, grabbing, emptying...


The Tree at the Gate
The tree, so perfectly silhouetted, a likeness of Form: once prefiguring, then fastened with God, and now foreshadowing, it pines for the...


Two Combatants in the Meantime
Morning time in the swamp pours like honey. The first hint of light serrates the darkness; shadows pliantly chip into opaque shapes....


The Cone of Uncertainty
If I had known I would be digging graves in my backyard, I would have evacuated for the hurricane. We did what everyone does when a...