Category: Series

3.9.2026 – leaning against each

leaning against each
other like drunken brothers
at a funeral

Adapted from the poem, Even Numbers by Carl Sandburg as published in The People, Yes in The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg by Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York, 1950).

1

A HOUSE like a man all lean and coughing,
a man with his two hands in the air at a cry,

“Hands up“

A house like a woman shrunken and stoop-shouldered,
shrunken and done with dishes and dances

These two houses I saw going uphill in Cincinnati

2

Two houses leaning against each other like drunken
brothers at a funeral,

Two houses facing each other like two blind wrestlers
hunting a hold on each other.

These four scrawny houses I saw on a dead level
cinder patch in Scranton, Pennsylvania

3

And by the light of a white moon m Waukesha, Wisconsin,
I saw a lattice work in lilac time white-mist lavender
a sweet moonlit lavender

Sorry but I just couldn’t resist.

Hey Little Brother!

Still in the drivers seat!

For those who know, they know,

For those who don’t know, that’s my little brother Pete watching me handle the reigns sitting in the drivers seat ( at the Dutch Village in Holland, Michigan).

I don’t have glasses yet and it looks like I still have my front teeth so this could have been the summer of 1968.

1969 was a rough year on my face.

I got glasses.

On my 9th birthday, I got hit in the face with a surf board that gashed my cheek open.

On Thanksgiving Day, running from my brother Timmy, I slipped and fell on the basement floor and chipped my left front tooth in half.

Still wear glasses.

Still have the scar.

One of grand daughters just lost her front teeth and asked her Mom if she could get a gold tooth like Pappa.

BTW, I should mention that this college basketball season, Michigan went undefeated on the road in the Big 10, something that hasn’t happened since 1976.

They tied the record of most regular season wins by a Big 10 team.

And in the process, the swept the home and away series with that team in East Lansing.

Home of the my little brother.

3.6.2026 – wave lasts moments but

wave lasts moments but
underneath another one
waiting to be born

Hilton Head Island, 3/5/2026

Adapted from the poem Waves by Jim Harrison in the collection, Saving Daylight as published in the Complete Poems of Jim Harrison (Copper Canyon Press: Port Townsend, WA 2021).

WAVES

A wave lasts only moments
but underneath another one is always
waiting to be born. This isn’t the Tao
of people but of waves.
As a student of people, waves, the Tao,
I’m free to let you know that waves
and people tell the same story
of how blood and water were born,
that our bodies are full of creeks
and rivers flowing in circles,
that we are kin of the waves
and the nearly undetectable ocean currents,
that the moon pleads innocence
of its tidal power, its wayward control
of our dreams, the way the moon tugs
at our skulls and loins, the way
the tides make their tortuous love to the land.
We’re surely creatures with unknown gods.

2.27.2026 – wilderness of waves

wilderness of waves
dip dive rise roll hide hidden
on the sea, day, night

The Sea is a wilderness of waves,
A desert of water.
We dip and dive,
Rise and roll,
Hide and are hidden
On the sea.
Day, night,
Night, day,
The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water.

Long Trip by Langston Hughes as published in Sail Away: Sea Poems by Langston Hughes, illustrated by Ashley Bryan (Atheneum: New York, 2015)

2.17.2026 – world so full should be

world so full should be
happy as kings, and you know …
how happy kings are

One sweet morning in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, a little old gentleman got up and threw wide the windows of his bedroom, letting in the living sun. A black-widow spider, who had been dozing on the balcony, slashed at him, and although she missed, she did not miss very far. The old gentleman went downstairs to the dining room and was just sitting down to a splendid breakfast when his grandson, a boy named Burt, pulled the chair from under him. The old man’s hip was strained, but it was fortunately not broken.

Out in the street, as he limped toward a little park with many trees, which was to him a green isle in the sea, the old man was tripped up by a gaily colored hoop sent rolling at him, with a kind of disinterested deliberation, by a grim little girl. Hobbling on a block farther, the old man was startled, but not exactly surprised, when a bold daylight robber stuck a gun in his ribs. “Put ‘em up, Mac,” said the robber, “and come across.” Mac put them up and came across with his watch and money and a gold ring his mother had given him when he was a boy.

When at last the old gentleman staggered into the little park, which had been to him a fountain and a shrine, he saw that half the trees had been killed by a blight and the other half by a bug. Their leaves were gone and they no longer afforded any protection from the skies, so the hundred planes which appeared suddenly overhead had an excellent view of the little old gentleman through their bombing sights.

Moral: The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings, and you know how happy kings are.

Further Fables VIII by James Thurber as was printed today, February 17, in the New Yorker Magazine back in 1940.

The first 2 stanzas of the moral are from the Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem Happy Thought (XXIV) from Mr. Stevenson’s Child’s Book of Verse.

The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.

The final part, and you know how happy kings are, was a favorite Thurber quote.

Oh how I wish for a Thurber or a Mencken to experience this era …

But then, I wouldn’t wish this era on anyone.

As Mr. Thurber said, The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings, and you know how happy kings are.

The fable must have been too dark as it wasn’t picked to be the either Fables for Our Time, published in 1939 or Further Fables for Our Time published in 1955, but had to wait for the Collected Fables which didn’t come around until 2019.