Loose Leaf Notes

A hopeful crescent blooms luminescent With destined presence a New Year shines ___________Colleen Redman

The last few weeks of my brother’s lives played out like the conclusion of a dramatic Hollywood script, a plot with a twist.  The road trip they took, two weeks before the first death, became the beginning of a larger journey, the one in which they would both leave this world.  I have decided to […]

– The following 2019 review was done by excerpting the first line or few in one post from each month last year. You can click on the name of the month for a full accounting. January –  If ice is a fool’s diamond, then I am a fool because I’m attracted to all that glitters, and […]

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on December 26, 2019. Families and friends of Springhouse Community School recently hosted a community Winter Solstice celebration. In a candlelit atmosphere, highlighted by holiday lights, they gathered in the school’s great hall to break bread and share songs together. “We wanted to honor the Solstice, a […]

1. Someone got a black light for Christmas. 2 . Someone else wore a piñata hat after it was opened with the force of a baseball bat. 3. All the usual suspects were there. 4. And then some. 5. If our annual Cookies and Kahlua Neighborhood Christmas Eve Party  was a scene from A Christmas […]

Now I understand where the term breathtaking comes from. I literally held my breath as Tara and Philip Bouknight’s voices reached the highest pitch. Uplifting I would call it. But some were brought to tears too, like when Philip read a moving account of the Christmas truce of 1914 when British and German soldiers stopped […]

The light trickles back through the skinny-waisted squeeze of winter’s hourglass grip From a luscious scoop of moon at the milky way counter the stars have spilled over in an icy cold night A silver blade in a dark ice capade cuts a luminescent figure It rolls across the sky growing in size an icy […]

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on December 19, 2019. Turned out, it was the best Christmas pageant ever, both for the characters in the June Bug Center’s recent play and for the audience watching.  A play within a play and a comedy of errors that ultimately embodied the spirit of Christmas, The […]

__________Our World Tuesday

1. My poem “Losing Poetry” was just published in POETiCA REVieW. See HERE.  2. I Want You to Do Me a Favor, Though.  Aka: Now That’s What I Call a Punchline below. 3. In Colonial language necessaries translates to “the bathroom.” 4. In Old Colonial Williamsburg last weekend, there was a long line of tourists […]

My grandson Bryce (far right) is as tall as me now and plays the clarinet.

The last few weeks of my brother’s lives played out like the conclusion of a dramatic Hollywood script, a plot with a twist.  The road trip they took, two weeks before the first death, became the beginning of a larger journey, the one in which they would both leave this world.  I have decided to […]