Poetry: Scheherazade
Scheherazade, fabled storyteller of Arabian Nights, under sentence of death, told stories with no endings. Endless new beginnings, night after night, kept her alive. But stories, for all of us,…
Poetry: Salvation Army Vibes
Outside the local supermarket in my small town, Salvation Army volunteers sit beside the Red Kettle, ringing their red bells, playing recorded Christmas carols. Mostly older, they work their shift,…
Poetry: From Ruins, Music
In the moldering ruins of Holyrood Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots lived, loved, suffered, where her secretary Rizzio was murdered, in the crumbling Abbey where Mary prayed, Mendelssohn found…
Personal History: Zen and My Current Location
In the spring of 2015, on a three-week trip to Paris and the British Isles, I took my new Samsung Galaxy S6. I was able to use Facebook, respond to…
Poetry: The Thing Is
Each time I look out the window, I see a poem passing. —Gwendolyn Brooks The thing about poetry is this: Sometimes you get an idea, and you say here’s a…
Poetry: A Teacher’s Nightmare
The other night I had a dream, strange and disturbing. I was in a class, literature maybe; the unseen teacher shared a text with us, told us to go home…
Poetry: Subtle Seasons
A scrap of paper tucked in a drawer reads “seasons are subtle on the Central Coast.” I wrote that note to myself several years ago. It was mostly true, and…
Poetry: Homeless
She was young, maybe in her twenties, a pretty face, asleep and cocooned in a blanket in the space between the concrete wall of the shopping cart corral and the…
Poetry: Los Osos Lament
Early morning, and I open my eyes tentatively, wondering. When I look out my window, will the hills be alight with sunshine? Will fog shroud the world in gray, obscuring…
Poetry: Fog at Whale Rock Reservoir
Photo by Juliane McAdam (2018) Driving back to Los Osos from Paso Robles, on California’s Central Coast, the afternoon hot and brilliant with sunshine, I decide it’s a perfect day…