I haven’t written on here for quite awhile. Even though no one reads these pages, I had taken small comfort in putting thoughts into text, and so I might be returning soon, on a semi-regular basis. Much has changed in both my own small corner of the world (and in the world in general) since …
Nothing To Fear, Nothing To Doubt
It’s early October, and the fields across the road have erupted into brambles, tangles of bitterly resolute life that the cats hide in on these gray late mornings, watching the ceaseless state road traffic mired by monolithic cotton harvesters and balers, blinding green insect-like machines soaring well above the narrow and twisting pavement, crawling mile …
Such A Pretty House And Such A Pretty Garden
Though I’m admittedly a man prone to hyperbole and portent, I can say that the rural areas just east of Memphis, Tennessee, are some of the most unique and even haunting I’ve ever known. This is not to speak of Memphis proper, a conflicted and lovably-decaying ruin on the banks of the country’s most fabled …
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Don’t they know it’s the end of the world?
Four months into the American pandemic emergency, and what is there left to say that’s still unspoken? How does one articulate just how swiftly, horrifyingly, our lives have changed forever? The way of existing as Americans that we knew prior to March of 2020 vanished in the quickest of breaths, and I think this might …
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Half Out Of Frame
When this last and sorrowful harvestoffers her bursting yields no more,and when our hands no longer trailupon summer’s vast golden reunions,consider us two as joined in sly fate,branch for branch along tepid rivers,as chickadees gather in the pine-tops. We have wandered far in our time,seen much that has swiftly blurredfrom endless backwards glances,amnesiac and brightly …
When The Light Is Mine, I Felt Gravity Pull
Edging into middle May now, the pandemic continues heedless as the nation collectively agrees the coast is clear, that the danger has passed for good. Corporations eagerly manipulate their homebound workers into shrieking ‘tyranny’ at sane and logical health measures, while the rest of us tremble in terror at efforts that will surely kill more …
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In Social Distancing
And If You Hear The Call, Don’t Wake Me When You Leave
Well then. This happened gradually and then suddenly, as the old saying goes. In a mere matter of weeks (really over the course of just a few days), COVID-19 has gone from late-night talk show punchline to all-encompassing apocalypse. Sit-down restaurants are banned from operating in Memphis city limits, and word on the street is …
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It’s A Hard Road You’re Travelin’, You Can’t Walk It Alone
Its been too long since we’ve spoken, friend. Winter ebbs in these rural locales between spring-like balminess imbued with croaking frogs and a bitter chill that robs the skies and fields of all discernible color. My walks through the neighborhood at night have become lengthier affairs, stepping from pooled yard lights outside of shotgun shacks …
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Let Roar These Fears, To The Whore Of My Tears
Following some temperate weather, the chill has returned. Gone are the previous weeks' room-shaking thunderstorms and breezy, balmy afternoons. Once again we're huddled within, heaters set on high, even the cats discouraged from venturing out into the frozen gloom. All continues as before, much in stasis: career decisions, future plans, health goals...each is suspended in …
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