as I drive to work the dawn light right in my face there’s the threat of rain So I’m looking at one of these TV clips with the good hearted GI giving candy to this kid. An uplifting story. So let me tell a little war story about why I don’t do uplifting. Early December …
Sasha Sings The Laundry On The Line by Sean Thomas Dougherty BOA Editions Paperback, $16.00 ISBN 9781934414392 Published September 2010 Many years ago, I was driving down a street with a friend, a geneticist who used to play cello in a symphony. It was spring. I mentioned how beautiful the blossoming pear trees were. He …
a maroon leaf drops stem to stem with a yellow an autumn death pact My mother is 101. She lives in a home. She had a private room until last month. Until her privacy didn’t matter because reality doesn’t matter. Because I live half-a-country away, I never met the new roommate. Until my visit last …
By the way, when Basho takes his Narrow Road to The Deep North, he is walking a path that leads him to, through, and around the very area in Japan that is suffering the nuclear disaster. Asaka, now Fukushima, he describes as wooded. It is here, if I recall correctly, that he searches in vain …
I never saw Saigon. In 1970, I was stationed at Camp Radcliff next to the village of An Khe in the Central Highlands. I was assigned to the army’s 4th Infantry Division. The 4th lived way north of Saigon. But in March of 1975, a month before The Fall Of Saigon, I lived in Dallas …
I don’t know why the young must die. I fought in a war, but I don’t understand war. I don’t understood why the memory of one war isn’t enough to horrify us when we hear the rumor of a second. I spent a week, ten days maybe, on a little island in the Outer Hebrides, …
another Monday again I surrender to the whisper of snow My wife is reading Freud this evening. I sweep the fireplace, the ashes from Sunday more interesting for what they were. Phoebe says something I don’t quite catch, something about desire. I stare out our picture window. I inventory our yard. Pine, twilight, beast, leaf, …
Memorial Day: We should mourn for all who have died because of militarism. May 31, 1993 I remember the first time I prayed for an enemy. It was just outside An Khe, a village in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. A helicopter gunship rocketed some North Vietnamese regulars who were about to attack us. I …