Prodigal son

When Dad died
+++I could
+++let him go
+++because
we had gone to McDonald’s
+++together.
Double cheeseburger,
+++shake, and fries.

Watching him
+++climb on the exercise bike
+++as soon as we
+++got back
+++to the nursing home,
I saw him at peace
+++with

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Pandemic reset

Never mind the endless cycling
of what we call news

ensorcelling tales of political theater,
social distress, and un-
natural disasters

things happening
elsewhere.

We are in the salutary midst
of the fall.

XVI The Tower trump card from the Marseilles deckWhat is close
is real.

Think of children
now

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Gardening

How can a virus travel
+++and not love?

Or are we not now all infected
with shame
+++at our human nakedness?

We don’t want to know our own evil
so profess good, pretending
+++to smile without hurting.

So painful.

The Tiananmen butterfly warns us:
cyclones we’ve stirred with our grasping
+++While the world shudders.

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The Virgin of Hollywood, Florida – February 21, 2007

The Virgin of Hollywood, Florida

This story was originally published on Walhydra’s Porch in February of 2007.  For those readers who don’t know her, Walhydra is my grouchy old crone storytelling persona. When faced with some petty or significant annoyance, Walhydra gives voice to my complaints.

The only rule for these stories is that she has to come to some even-older-but-wiser resolution by the end—either on her own or through the intervention of The Goddess.  For more Walhydra, see here.

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“Coyotes”

Coyotes
by Mark Jarman

Is this world truly fallen? They say no.
For there’s the new moon, there’s the Milky Way,
There’s the rattler with a wren’s egg in its mouth,
And there’s the panting rabbit they will eat.
They sing their wild hymn on the dark slope,
Reading the stars like notes of hilarious music.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?

And yet we’re crying over the stars again,

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Lois

Jim and I sat with Mom for the last couple hours of her life last night.

Before sunrise on Wednesday, I had awoken from a powerful dream, in which the vibrant, out-going Mom whom I haven’t seen in several years was holding everyone’s attention at a party with her three brother and other family and friends.

Later that morning, when I visited her at St. Catherine Labouré Manor, I found her in her recliner in the sunny hallway

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