Was I lucky to have a dad obsessed with transplanting north Georgia mountain tradition to Alabama soil? I didn’t think so, especially on Saturday afternoons. While the neighbors’ kids played kickball on the cul-de-sac, our family tended the crops on the utility easement. There was nothing sentimental about growing squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, corn, and beans, beans, beans—until now.
Blog
Nature’s Humor—If We’re Free to See in the Moment
For all its beauty, nature can play a joke, as in the time I once passed beneath a stately magnolia and spotted a nest with a tag likely torn from a pillow. It was a laugh-out-loud moment: a bird recycling human trash.
Starting the Day with an Offer of Loving-kindness
I remember a time when I started the day seizing on the news cycle or my to-do list for work. However, exploring what’s behind anxiety and depression, I shifted my before-dawn routine to quiet time. Settling into a meditative practice has taken years. I discovered the loving-kindness approach and never looked back.
When I Found Joy in the Morning: “Swimming After Trout”
The exuberance of diving into a mountain lake inspired this poem, which opens the third section (Summer) of my poetry collection, The Tears of Things: Poems. It was a ritual that announced days of soaking up sun and swimming in pristine waters.
Memorial Day: Cherishing Life in the Brutality of War
He scooped up a few gentle creatures and stowed them in shoeboxes below. The typhoon raged, battering most birds to death against the ship. When the seas calmed, Dad slipped below and gathered the shoeboxes. Then he ran topside, releasing the birds to soar. Life, after all, in the madness of death.