A study in blank verse                           The predators of chickens: people worldwide,    coyotes, foxes, possums, owls and bears....

male’s loud bob-o-link a harsh guttural chuck three-syllable song, coo-coo-cup a  faint and thin bee-yup or yep a single, loud klee-yer ...

Did I tell you about the time I was strapped to the minute hand-- Big Ben--quite the fright-- upright on the hour supine at quarter past...

A big white dog showed up in Linda’s yard.  She thinks he was abandoned  by herders who summer their flocks up Snow Canyon.  “Great...

probably, I would have busied  myself arranging deckchairs, maybe dusting, while I ignored the screaming, the pushing  and shoving and...

Not long ago, perhaps last evening, while I was relaxing on the deck, a book on my lap, bony feet propped  on a stool, I watched my...

Will you fix the distance for me? Hold it with a horse and rider. They seem to know where they’re going. Hold it with the dust plume of a...

From  that rough-legged hawk’s point of view a field mouse is more interesting than you.

Apologies to William Carlos Williams                      1. Burn down the house. Be certain it’s your house. Don’t rush to save the...

Coming home from Carmel in an SUV with four other women, don’t worry about looking silly  as you file into the ladies room  at the Quick...

Susanna and the Elders by Lorenzo Lotto, 1517 See the overweight woman in a red dress? The tiny figure reminds me of my dead mother. Look...

Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe  She ruined the picnic when she took off her clothes. No peeking, no sneaking, nothing to suppose. I wore...

That fancy name for the impulse to jump from the top of the Empire State, climb over the rail of the Golden Gate, step off the Grand...

She hears it whirring in the darkened room and knows another summer bat has found its passage to her tangled August dream of fruit and...

Another Tuscarora Tale        Nothing matters to the dead/ that's what's so hard for the rest of us/ to take in-/ their complete...

Another  Tuscarora Tale                          This spring I asked Harry if he would please cut down an overhanging chokecherry branch...

It is not only at the opera that we think of life as a story and wish it to end well.       Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow...

Another Tuscarora Tale This is not one of those “You had to be there” stories.  It is one of those “Have you ever taken a wrong...