We managed to avoid getting Covid for almost three years, to the point that when that screaming hot pink line appeared on the test strip one late night, my first thought was that the test must be flawed. But the body overrules denial in most cases, and the strange but well-documented symptoms began their Dada-esque

A few days ago I went to my seventh and perhaps my last Springsteen concert, which was (as always) a tour de force love child of sacred pilgrimage and family reunion. Just seeing Bruce with all his living (and dead in a video and likely in spirit) band mates for over 50 years, plus the

This is the week of the Bruces for me — I saw Bruce Cockburn in concert Thurs. night, and Sat. night, I’m off to see Bruce Springsteen for the umpteenth time. Today as I listened to some of my favorite Cockburn songs (like “Wondering Where the Lions Are”), then bumped into a full Springsteen concert

I was fifteen years ago and miserable when I first went to a youth group Havdalah service one winter evening. I was living with my very difficult father in a big house, so much bigger now that my mother and siblings had moved out, and I was the loneliest I had or have ever been,

Juxtapositions — putting like with non-like — add zip, surprise, sometimes anxiety, and often uncertainty to our lives. They’re also at the heart of what makes poetry poetry: images and language you don’t expect together that pop open new ways to see the world. So let’s just say it’s more a more-than-poetic weekend (or life).

In the middle of the longest night of the year, my anxiety search dogs kept jarring me awake, running amok while looking for something to chew on. Tiny and medium-sized annoyances, worries, and sadnesses gripped me at 1:05 a.m., 3:33 a.m., and at a higher speed between 4:15-5:15 a.m. for some reason. “Chill out,” I

“I’m not going to leave a message,” my sister Lauren said when she left a message Friday. I was standing in the corner of an ebullient restaurant where Ken and I were having dinner with friends. I had slipped away from the table when I saw texts from two of my three siblings to call

It’s almost twilight, Moxie dog is sleeping in the corner, my ears are buzzing with low-hum tinnitus, and I’m about to make dinner. Looking into my house and glancing out the windows to see our warm lights reflected over the darkening sky, I realiz the best thing to write about are some of the things

Time continually befuddles me, so much so that my last book of poetry was called How Time Moves, and I’m still deep in the muck of figuring out what time is and how it keeps slipping through my fingers and surging backwards under my moving feet. Being a little number-dyslexic, I also stumble mightily when

I’ve stopped tuning into most of what we call news until after the midterms. It isn’t because I don’t care, quite the contrary, but because I keep learning that the realer news is right out the front or back door, which is also a great remedy for tangling myself in the land of what-ifs. Unlike