Category Archives: Explorations

October 6 in Illinois, I had driven to the cemetery for GG’s birthday. She died the same month she was born. It’s a small-town cemetery, maybe a thousand people are buried there. GG is next to my grandpa Pop, and … Continue reading →

The earth was something like a billion years old, stardust from the big bang blending together in of the right elements that give us life. Mohammed was long gone, the Buddha too, and Jesus at least 2000 years, conquests and … Continue reading →

It was Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 830am. A 20 minute walk, often in the South Bend gray. The permacloud we called it. If I was late, most of the time, I slinked in, up the left aisle to find a … Continue reading →

It’s the time of year, green leaves to golden to red then falling down down down to the dry grasses below to be crunched and crumbled together back into the elements. Everything in a race to die or to become … Continue reading →

The railroad tracks behind my childhood home feature prominently in the tracks of my memory. It had been years though since I spent any significant amount of time on or around them. Chasing crawdaddies and tadpoles in the pooled water, … Continue reading →

Backyard My parents backyard, my hometown. The two-story farmhouse, yard sandwiched between that and a decrepit railroad tracks that an occasional string of cars parked on, railway screech, high pitched scream, en route to the steel factory, steel on steel. … Continue reading →

They say good fences make good neighbors. But I’ve fallen out of love, I unlove, our fence. The fortress on South Van Ness. Once an old rickety white picket fence, she shuddered when slammed. The winter rains would come, swelling … Continue reading →

I watch him, tattered stonewash jeans, white threadbare tanktop. His mop of white hair the same since the day I was born. He is so tan, my mom calls him a Native American. I believed her for a season. One … Continue reading →

Rats, rats moved in and chewed up our new car engine. Then a flat tire. Then a tire sensor broken. Then a busted, vandalized tail light. Then a cracked windshield. And that was just the car problems. Distracted on the … Continue reading →

Red, pinks, chums, springs. They are all congregating, with clarity in their mission to take their last breaths at the head of the watershed, up kilometers of jagged rocks punctuated by gentle sloping sandy beds, with smooth worn pebbles. Past … Continue reading →