Writing
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Today is August 4, 2026″ – and seventy-six years ago, Ray Bradbury imagined a future full of Smart Homes, artificial intelligence, and the loss of humanity. Thirty-two years before that in 1918, struck with the horrors of World War One and the Spanish Flu Pandemic, Sara Teasdale presented her vision of a world restored, nature…
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For the first time in at least five years, my wife and I escaped for a five-day getaway to celebrate our anniversary. Our destination: Presque Isle, Pennsylvania. Our only goal: time to be quiet and enjoy the gift of one another and the beauty of creation. We were dazzled by the stones and small shells…
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Stepping out my backdoor on a typically busy Sunday morning, I was compelled to stop and listen to the varied carols of a mid-May Western Pennsylvania morning. Rather than move forward with my task of moving the car up to the road to pick up my family and load the instruments, I simply bathed in…
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Spring comes early for a twelve-year-old. No sooner had Wolf Creek thawed and warmer weather returned than my son came asking to go in the creek. A western Pennsylvania April isn’t the ideal time to return to the waters. As T. S. Eliot so aptly put it, “April is the cruellest month” (The Waste Land).…
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Here’s a short poem I worked on throughout the month of March but never got around to posting. I honestly can’t imagine what it’s like to struggle with insomnia. I’ve never had difficulty falling asleep nor have I been plagued by night thoughts. Sure, I’ve had a few nights where, in the heat of the…
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For over seven years, my friend and fellow writer, James, and I have met every few weeks at our local Dunkin’ to carve out an hour and a half of dedicated time to write. Admittedly, it’s not the most conducive atmosphere for creativity, but beggars can’t be choosers. I’d much rather have a local pub…
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Sometimes I feel like I’ve forgotten how to be a poet or how to compose songs. In the silence that seems like writer’s block, those critical internal voices grow deafening. For example, since early October, I’ve been trying to wrestle my thoughts into a sonnet. That otherworldly rattling call of the Sandhill Cranes crossing overhead…
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Missing in action. That’s how I’ve felt, creatively (and emotionally), for the past two months. Little time to pay attention. Little time to be astonished. Little time to tell about it. I’ve failed to live by Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life. Fall has always been a season brimming with activity: school starts, I…
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I’ve come back to Mary Oliver after she popped up in the book I’m reading for enjoyment between preparing for school and repairing our fleet of cars! The book is Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (I know: enjoyment?), and Mary Oliver shows up on page 104. Of course, this sent…
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Personally, I love the look of gabion retaining walls, but the work of filling them can be exhausting. We had a lot of bricks and old paving stones to begin the process, leaving the nicer looking landscape rocks for the visible sides. But when you have nearly twenty-two feet of gabions that are thirty-nine inches…
the deepening ground 