CROWS
We're a little over a week away from the gate we call Election Day, and if you're like me, you have no idea what awaits us on the other side.
In August 2019, I wrote a poem. It was based on a real experience of seeing a flock of crows descend upon a green field, creating a confusion of figure vs. ground, of croaking voices and glittering black eyes in jet-black bodies, clever, strutting, socializing, dominating the field. It was a metaphor for dark times ahead.
I haven't written a serious poem since. Why? Because the "Crows" poem -- which I had named 2020, anticipating the year but not the pandemic -- largely came true. And that scared me, because it was the darkest poem I had ever written.
Judge for yourself, this anxious season.
Hunger
If you don’t have a choice, if there’s no food, if there’s no alternative, hunger will be there. It’s a potent force. It doesn’t care who you are or where you’ve been. It will take up residence in your home, in your family, and in you. It’s resilient and resourceful. It will hunt you down and kill you. It’s the meanest thing there is.
It knows only one enemy: sharing.
A 9/11 Remembrance
What heroism is. Beyond the event itself, a glimpse at the efforts of an extraordinary man whose dogged efforts saved thousands of lives on 9/11
Journalism and Democracy: Letter to a Newspaper Intern
What does a career in journalism mean? This letter, written to an intern covering her first (and emotionally intense) story, asks where journalism belongs in a democratic republic.
Of Toys and Constitutions
How hand-crafting a complex toy for my grandson reminded me of what it took to craft the Constitution - written between Memorial Day and Independence Day - from Remembrance to Revolution.
A Modest Proposal
With apologies to Jonathan Swift - a much better satirist - here is a reaction to the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v Wade. There is a way out. But it would likely be unpopular with men.
The Misinformation Pandemic
We like to think of our world as orderly. But a pandemic illustrates just how wrong we are. In our quest for certainty and resolution, the unknown gives rise to exploitable fears and with them, opportunity for misinformation. What to do?