The Journey

It would be heavenly if she could seeher children on the front yard again,glance at them through the windowabove the sink as she fills the housewith the sweet smells of her baking;if, when she called them for dinner they came running, knowing what...

“So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart,” Billy Collins concludes in his poem, Names (for the victims of September 11th and their survivors).On Sunday, May 24, The New York Times listed all 100,000 people in the country who, at that time, had...

One photo showcases the legacy left by our parents, a generation that insisted on legislation that protected our water and air, endangered species, and held those who polluted with hazardous waste financially responsible for the cleanup. The other tells the story...

Despite the garlic mustardmarching as an army across the dune,or the herd of ever-grazing deer,or the clawed paws of the squirrelsscampering from tree to tree, this morning, among the crumbling leavesof last year’s memories, I discovered a trillium, nudging me...

I want to write a poem about the fox or the robin the turkeys or the moon or even the radiant colorsof last evening’s sunsetbut all I can think aboutare those empty store shelves knowing at some point I will get down to that last rolland nowhere in my boxes ​of...

I want to write a poem about the pearly white pants of the Dutchman, flashing spring’s arrival across the crinkly-brown of winter, but last month . . .It was reported there were 62% more facilities in the Great Lakes region in “significant noncompliance” with the...

The Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in southern France is closed during this pandemic.  Considered a sacred site by the Catholic Church, it is the place where Mary, the Mother of God, is said to have appeared repeatedly to 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous in...

 Just before Easter weekend, we said goodbye to my mother-in-law, slipping away from us, alone, in a hospital bed in Midland, MI. A nurse, just off her shift, provided the phone that made those tearful goodbyes possible. Irene was not a victim of COVID-19, but...

“The water of Mother Earth, she carries life to us, and as women we carry life through our bodies,” wrote Josephine Mandamin in a journal she began on a rainy, cold day in April 2003. “We as women are life-givers, protectors of the water . . .”That day marked the...

I worried, as I am prone to do, about the thousands of families in Detroit without even a dribble flowing from faucets, their water shut off because of unpaid bills. How do they wash their hands for twenty seconds when they enter their homes? How do they drink...

When we were young, my mother threated to wash our mouths out with soap if we said anything disrespectful or harmful to another person. Of her six children, I am the one who tasted the bar of soap, a memory that still causes my mouth to recoil some six decades...