Today my darling Anthony turns three. I can hardly believe it. The sweetest little toddler is now a little boy. He’s mischievous and loud and so very, very boyish. He still says “I love you” a dozen times a day. With the hugs to...
Boy at the Window by Richard Wilbur Seeing the snowman standing all alone In dusk and cold is more than he can bear. The small boy weeps to hear the wind prepare A night of gnashings and enormous moan. His tearful sight can hardly reach to where The...
Dom had Presidents’ Day off; but of course I didn’t even realize it until SAturday or Sunday. It’s just another day to me. So when I realized he was off, I thought there was no way I was going to waste it by staying home. So, what...
Epic By Patrick Kavanagh I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided, who owned That half a rood of rock, a no-man’s land Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims. I heard the Duffys shouting ‘Damn your...
The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins To Christ our Lord I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High...
From the Irish by James Simmons Most terrible was our hero in battle blows; hands without fingers, shorn heads and toes were scattered. That day there flew and fell from astonished victims eyebrow, bone, and entrail, like stars in the sky, like...
Today Sophie poured an entire glass of water into my laptop keyboard. It will be several days before we can even turn it on to see whether it’s been damaged or not. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out how to publish posts from my iPad...
On Monday and Tuesday I read The Kitchen Madonna by Rumer Godden to Isabella and Sophia. (Ben and Anthony listened a bit too, but were in and out. The story was too slow to captivate them for that long.) This is one of my favorite Godden stories and...
View of Mt. Fuji, #84 by Len Krisak But what’s a view without a joke or two? Here, Hokusai half-hides his picture’s heart Behind a net that’s risen like a sail. Horizon disappears between the blue Of water and a clear, light sky...
Heroic Simile by Robert Hass When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai in the gray rain, in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty, he fell straight as a pine, he fell as Ajax fell in Homer in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge...
