The Doctor Is In

This letter is a compilation of four, written to my family members in celebration of Christmas and thankfulness for the gift they are to me.
In the beginning, it was there.

It was there–at the razor’s edge: that infinitesimal instant between nothingness and creation, at the flash of brilliance so fierce no universe could contain it.
It was […]

 
The headlights
Slashing, their savage brilliance hacking at the night
Frantically seeking the heart which drives this dark hollow beast.
Where is she?
There. Alone. Walking.
Hair cast in cold mercury vapors, the mockery of light.
Cold. Shivering. Surviving, yet again.
The road, empty.
The heart, empty.
The words, enraged and empty.
The road, unlit, dark as dawn divorced of day.
Questions pour forth
Rushing like blackened […]

It’s been a hellacious month (a hellacious year, actually — more on that in a minute), with big changes at work (two new employees to train), a major home construction/repair project going on, and a near-fatal case of the avian flu (well, it felt like bird flu… ) from which I am just now barely […]

It is, after a fashion, a legend of the fall.

Not mine, mind you — although one could say my fall was in some ways greater.
My wife’s mother was, though elderly, quite strong and independent — alert, cantankerous, losing a little memory here and there, in nearly constant pain from vertebrae once tall and straight but […]

I know you’re all already jaded about Christmas, with the Costco and K-Mart displays showing up in September, the endless bad Christmas TV commercials, and the growing pressure to figure out the perfect present for a gaggle of worthy recipients who already have more stuff than they could possibly use in several lifetimes.
But it’s […]

Virginia V - Mosquito Fleet ferry
 
I’ve been a bit out of pocket of late, in no small part due to an ongoing family crisis (which I alluded to here) which has consumed a lot of time and even more emotional energy. So I haven’t had the time or mental wherewithal to put many cogent thoughts […]

 
There are times when the feebleness of prose fails; when clarity of language and reasoned arguments cannot do justice to the cries of the heart. In the depths of our souls there are emotions, experiences, pain, joy which defy the pathetic limitations of mere words; whose depths and complexities, whose heights and depths, defeat the […]

 
When waters break, their power spent in fine mist on the breeze,
to thus retreat, and gather up and hurl again
against those jagged boulders yet unfazed;
What purpose, they, whose molten age in fiercest shapes did freeze,
their faces polished now by salt and sand,
igniting foaming fury upward raised?
And why the rolling wave from distant endless seas,
a trifling […]