Loose Leaf Notes

We biked up to the top of Mill Mountain from the Roanoke River Greenway. It was a steep switch-back climb. I Ieft Joe in the dust because my bike has an electric motor and his does not. At the top is the world’s largest man-made star. Erected in 1949, the Mill Mountain Star sits 1,045 […]

1. I was playing Old Maid with my youngest grandson and wondered out loud what a comparable word for an old maid would be for a man, and he suggested, “Old Butler.” It took me a moment. 2. As we played cards, my eldest grandson played some Master of Puppets Metallica on guitar. 3. Thug […]

There was a lot of green to be seen at McDaniel’s Tavern at Buffalo Mountain Brewery last night and a new brew called Lucky Charm. I was already lucky because I had just come from The Great Clover Hunt with Muriel Alderman at Floyd’s Center for the Arts and found my first wild four-leaf clover. […]

Life is a number’s game A countdown to morning where I re-member myself and start over each day where I watch a patch of blue follow it from my window being pushed aside by a flood of cloud cover I have dark thoughts I told a woman in a dream She said don’t say dark […]

1. Because of my dyscalculia, Joe says, “If you were a band your name would be “Wrong Direction” instead of “One Direction.” 2. The new goal of my poetry readings is: “Reading Poetry that Jack Has Never Heard.” 3. I’ve read with carpenter poet Jack Callan at his Fairmount Five readings in Norfolk, as one […]

Daylight Saved Daffodils Chilled Bouquet on Ice Snow Kidding

A groove to move. The Parachute Brigade Lands at Dogtown. Thanks for the dance music!

But it was Knitting Bee and Scrabble Social at the Floyd Country Store, a homey hub for lunch hour clubs.

1. The forsythia surrounds me like warm bowls of sun. 2. With the flick of a switch the daffodils are lit. 3. Climate changed blooms / come a month too soon / forsythia flowers died / the year Trump won election / tampered in his favor / by Russians and traitors / refugees had no […]

Stephen Jenkinson, author of Die Wise, describes our culture as death phobic and grief illiterate. And yet, there we were in the spirit of poetic memoir and depth psychology, delving into subjects so often avoided. Katherine left the bedside of a dying friend to share this encore call-and-response reading that she and I had done […]