Youth often finds itself a casualty of unawareness. In some instances, where there might be gratitude for preadult ignorance, being poor isn’t fun, at any age. I grew up privileged. Some may find it more difficult to embrace having nothing, after having grown up without financial worries. Finding yourself without savings as a senior citizen, however, really blows.

Courageous Frida, icon to millions
who know no more of you than your eyebrows
on the t-shirts your face adorns,
what is your name worth now?

Nitin Gharpure eases his Mercedes along the curb in the alley behind the warehouse. At the end of the alley, a semi is going beep-beep-beep, backing into a loading ramp, aligning a forty-foot container to the dock. And behind that, delicate tendrils of pink are forming over the distant Oakland hills.

In two weeks’ time, I will depart,
and you will see me fading out the doorway,
disappearing from your time and space.

Nothing, no one ever leaves completely,
and so you will not see or hear but sense
the presence, the silence, the smile/frown

It was Tuesday afternoon, on what should have been just another day of service for the Customs Patrol.
Sergeant Baxter of Southern District Airport’s Customs and Vetting Division was nearly ready to wrap up his shift. It had been quiet, this one. He’d normally hit his quota by the first few hours, after which he could busy himself with paperwork or checking out for anyone else he could justify not letting in.

For years the school bus took the same path
past your grandmother’s house—just uphill from yours

each day the fields flickering past,
sometimes filled with corn,
autumn filled with hay bales

The wind blows fierce on the Isle of Rankor. It pushes in the waves, fast and rhythmic, until they wash upon the sands. Together, the forces carry ships into the harbor, which spans the coastline as intricate as a maze. At any given time, a hundred ships unload their imports and load exports with ease. This is the Isle’s tradition: wind and waves and trade, the tradition Caroline and Marina have grown up with all their lives.

You can’t handle the truth of X
and Y complexities in your own
species, so it’s obvious you think
you can tell our gender by the
colour of our breasts or know
that we are born all-brown.

Before I understood the weight of memory and the grace of healing, I had hands that reached, held, and learned. Now, when I look at my hands, I don’t recognize them. Not because they’ve changed, but because they’ve held so many lives—mine, my children’s, my grandchildren’s, my ailing Papa’s and Mama’s before they died, my brother’s, dear friend June’s, and adapted Daddy’s Sam’s before they too succumbed to illness. Through it all, my hands never once asked for rest.

Bill Moyers left us on June 26 at the age of 91.[1] His declining health over the past few years, and now his death, have left us longing for more of what he gave so generously in life: insatiable curiosity, clarifying insight, empathy grounded in respect, courage tempered by humility, and optimism anchored in realism.
Because of his life’s work—and because his career spanned a remarkable era in mass communication, from the birth of television to the rise of the internet—we are fortunate to have an extraordinary archive of his spoken and written words. These will continue to inform, inspire, and challenge future generations.

My friend Alex was twelve years old when it happened. Years later, he told me it was like time had stopped the instant his father parked the car on top of the railroad tracks on Spring Street, pulled the keys from the ignition and tossed them out the window. I’ve always imagined Alex, his mother, and his younger sister looking at each other in stunned silence as the father closed his eyes and calmly surrendered to the universe, which he believed had defeated him at every turn.

As I age and tire of life, my child-self is insistently present. She has not faded with the passing of time; instead, I have a growing sense of quiet urgency—to know her more deeply and to comfort her.
That long-ago child was the middle of three daughters: her older sister, the favored child, too old to be a companion, and the younger too young. She was ignored by her parents. In a matter-of-fact way, she expected indifference and accommodated neglect. Paradoxically she also faced the brunt of their rage, prompted, they said, by her audacity and impertinence. She dreamed about leaving home.

As the fourth-born kid of five, like anyone from a big family, I grew up in an ensemble. We were spread enough in years that school kept us segregated by age, so we had two main gathering sites. The first was the dinner table, where the social task was to make a worthy offering to the highly opinionated conversation. Maybe there was no offering within reach, other family members being older and more experienced. Maybe you stood to underscore a point or fetched a dictionary to prove that “flaccid” is pronounced with a “k” in the middle or happened on a witty remark and sparked a few laughs or tried to vanish into the wallpaper to avoid negative attention.

The riot gate clangs behind me as I stride down the wide concrete hallway, nodding to passing officers and inmates. At a little over six feet tall and still carrying my fighting weight of 230 pounds, I know the inmates and even some of the newer officers find my size and demeanor intimidating. I try to soften my serious demeanor—bolstered by my icy-blue eyes and square jaw—by wearing my Yogi Bear tie with my usual black slacks and white dress shirt. My “uniform,” as my wife, Trula, calls it.

It was not the sort of story that could stay hidden in a small town. People in Florence paid attention to everyone else’s details: a car missing from a driveway in the early morning hours, a skipped shift at work, one less body tucked into the pew on Sunday morning. This was how the people of Florence governed themselves: with the understanding that there was no such thing as a secret.

the better-off displace old families
leaving just a remnant behind
neighborhood changes fast
innovative foliage, bolstered lawns
porch, deck, people repaired and not
show it all happening at once

In the quiet darkness of her backyard, Annemarie sat in wonder, gazing at the brilliance of a full moon. A “super moon” technically, though she couldn’t remember at the moment what its special name was tonight… Harvest moon? Hunters moon? It didn’t matter. The beauty was positively hypnotizing as the moon dazzled like a jewel, with twinkling stars sprinkled all around it in the perfect, clear night sky. Its glow illuminated the woods with gentle moonbeams filtering down between the trees.

The police separated us into two cop cars. One car contains Stephen and Hugh; my boyfriend Matthew and I ride in a separate car. They didn’t handcuff us, but they certainly looked me up and down with disdain. I’m feeling overwhelmed and lightheaded because just before the police came, Hugh shoved his marijuana on me. He told me to hide it in my underwear because “they won’t search a girl.” I complied but questioned my judgement. And now I’m on my way to the police station feeling like a captured bird.

In 2022, I wrote an essay for Soundboard: The Journal of the Guitar Foundation of America, but my name was misprinted in the print edition as Vish S. Watson. No great tragedy, these things happen.
In 1907, Israel Baline, a singing waiter in the Bowery, penned “Marie, From Sunny Italy,” but when the handbills accidentally attributed it to I. Berlin, Baline liked the name, thought it had a classy ring, and promptly adopted it, upgrading the “I” to Irving.
I myself have no aspirations for fame or fortune and no thoughts of upgrading my name.

With every passing Christmas, my sons and their families spend less and less time in the house before hurrying back to their own homes. I will not see them again until the next Christmas, when they will reluctantly come again to honor the childhood promise that they made on their mother’s deathbed: to always keep in touch. Only then will the house see some life, this big empty house that they’ve given me so they don’t have to live with me.

And in Venice, spring!
priest manqué
Baron Corvo’s pimping presence
passes by,
on the lookout for the right boys.
Oh che bel divertimento!

In 1970, the year the world learnt that the Beatles would split, Sister Carole decided to join the Daughters of Charity. It was like a love affair, she tells me as we meet over Zoom, a day after a statewide COVID-19 lockdown had been announced. Carole’s love affair was less dramatic compared to one of the most famous love affairs at the time — the romance between John Lennon and Yoko Ono (who married the year before) — but for Carole, it would be her lifelong love.

The old woman, Ramona, like her umbrella, was from another time, a slower, quieter time, a time she missed. Despite a tight grip, the umbrella inflated above her hoary head, twisting in howling gusts. Cold raindrops plentiful as her days pin-pricked her eyes. Her feet shifted to avoid puddles but not fast enough, and her socks were soaked, and her feet soggy and cold.
I am only halfway to the grocery store. What a day, what clima!

I take the cobbled path through town
that I have walked for years.
The streets are for the wary—
ice strewn here and there
as if they had tired
of the nagging shovels.
The air still
with the silence of February.