He was drawn to the ocean with the soul of a poet and the heart of a lover. A few times I sat on a boat with Rev. Sun Myung Moon, fishing at the “tuna grounds” off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts. He usually went out around dawn, fished all day and boated home in the […]
And really, who wouldn’t rather sink than call Brad for help? Roy Lichtenstein’s iconic oil painting from 1963, Drowning Girl, nails contemporary teen romance like no other work of art. With Brad’s name on her lips she arrives on the beach, fresh as a peach blossom, perky as a fruit pie (whatever) and there is Brad […]
What good is art if it cannot be of service to love? We all know what goo-goo-eyed love is, but love also means reconciling the entire world and turning enemies into family. It’s a lot of territory to cover in a few lines, and this poem which began as my personal expression of passion, does […]
Anyone who is one in heart with God is one in heart with everyone else who is one in heart with God. I was in Manila fighting sin. (Anyone who fights sin, by the way, spends most of the time fighting their own. That’s just the way we’re built.) But that’s not what this is […]
You’re never too young, too cute or too feminine to learn to spit like a baseball player. Life is a complex, disorganized mess and I’m doing my best to try to bring order and balance to a chaotic universe. Daughters, for instance. I am the father of three daughters and two sons. Regarding daughters, it’s […]
To my mother-in-law, the atomic bomb looked a lot closer than it was. Setsuko Sonoda was a girl of 13 on August 9, 1945. She lived on the same land she does today at age 80. The family farm is outside Yatsushiro on Japan’s southernmost island of Kyushu, just across the bay from Nagasaki. She […]
True Life Adventure. Honey Nim sent me shopping for some sliced turkey breast. Or kale. (a lot of people get the two mixed up). Anyway, I get a pouch of mac & cheese, nature’s perfect food, which I know she’ll like much better. Just add a little water and nuke it in the pouch. I’m […]
…it hopped the last train to the coast, taking relationship and romance with it. The thing is, poetry has never ceased to be vital for the human spirit. Poetry, “vitamin P,” is an essential nutrient that mitigates societal floundering by enlarging our capacity to put the world into perspective, to digest woe and be tolerant […]
Me and Honey Nim have five children. I live in a faith community where that number doesn’t even raise an eyebrow, but in the general population of our fellow sojourners on Earth, five children gets commented on. As in, “Wow, that’s a lot!” “Really? Really? You really think so? “Yeah.” No hock, Sherlock. Five children […]
Going to Room Temp. No matter who you are, how rich and good looking, how well you clean up after working in the garden and how much you like those danged long walks on the beach – someday you’re going to wake up dead. You will no longer be a physical person, and will from this […]
