The dire prediction that our democracy
is on the way down and out is a pretty

strong argument and the threat of the
ascendancy of fascism in America is

also something to take seriously, but a
wise rabbi once said that the media is

geared to scare the be-jesus (I paraphrase)
out of us and I appreciate that wisdom.

Hey, it helped elect this guy president.
It all sounds dire and drastic and thankfully

the media has now done an about-face,
but no one is talking about American

resilience. We aren’t Germany in the
1930s and, yes, while we need to remain

alert and diligent and resistant (all wonder-
ful things we actually are doing and are

seemingly indigenous to us as Americans)
we need to affirm our strength, our history

of hard times and threatening movements,
our faults and our sins and our culpability,

our racism and our corporate amnesia,
and then we need to look at ourselves

and honestly say yes to all that and then
say that we still are all here and capable

of change, inclusion, accommodation,
celebration and eventually, God willing,
elation.

She wrote that she was looking
toward the dog’s ETA.
“What is an ETA?” I asked.
“Estimated time of arrival.”
I’m still wondering about mine.
“I’ve never been lucky. The day
my ship came in, I was at the
airport.” Bada bing, bada
bang, bada boom. There’s danger
in that field so you better
take Rod’s knee. Henny was
a young man when he started
in standup. “A doctor gave a man
six months to live. The man
couldn’t pay his bill, so he
gave him another six months.”
That would make his ETA at
one year.

It was 1967 and we were sitting at a table
in the commons semi-circled by ceiling to
floor length windows letting in the warming

winter sun. Spoons clinked against saucers
holding empty coffee cups. The conversation
among us seminary students ranged from theo-

logy to gossip and the time together was
about to end when a classmate said he couldn’t
believe that I had misspelled a word in an

article in the most recent student literary
publication. In that moment, I decided to start
writing poetry again after not thinking about

it since my sophomore year in college. Maybe
I thought I could get away with misspellings
as poetic license or maybe I hoped my classmate

didn’t read poetry but that was when fellow
students didn’t show up to proofread articles
and before computers with spellcheck and

proofread. Anyway, I never thanked that class-
mate for helping me rediscover one of the
loves of my life to whom I have remained

faithful, more or less, through the years. And
best of all, my love doesn’t seem to mind
when I spell my love’s name incorrectly.

Snow falls everyday.
The sun shines everyday, too —
How we know it snows.
Sun illumines everything —
The glory of creation.

Snow falls everyday.
The sun shines everyday, too —
Despite politics.

As the Turner Classic movie
The Moulin Rouge began,
the man thought of the old
joke, “It’s Toulouse-Lautrec,
so tighten it up.” And then
he watched the sketching
in the Moulin Rouge catch-
ing the dancers mid-action
for posterity. The dancing
ended and the short-legged
man walked back to his room
and into art history.

the male cardinal
brushed the snow away as he
sat on the bird feeder.  the
feed came and he found his mate
and seeds they both ate.

The Democrats in Congress
are getting ready to sell the
dreamers down stream.

The kids will be crossing
the Rio Grande
into what for them is
an alien land.

There go the Dems
with spines of jello
and feet as mushy
as marshmallow.

Stupidly, they believed
McConnell’s promise
to save DACA
thinking he was honest,

when, in fact,
to borrow a presidential pitch,
McConnell is just
ly’n Mitch.

Demurring from a swear word that
rhymes with Mitch
I’ll just settle for exclaiming,
“Our country is in a BLOODY
pickle, stew, jam, fix.”

fluffy flakes flew down,
settled softly on the ground —
a downy blanket.

The man was done with
his mid-winter, morning jog
and entered the local bakery.
The mostly,
blue-haired senior citizens
were all agog
looking at his rosy red knees.
“Hey, doncha’ know it’s freezin’?”
shouted the old Dutchman in his best
Zeelandeez,
“It’s okay to be in shorts.
As long as my head,
hands and feet are warm my
knees can freeze.”
answered the man
in a quick retort.
As the jogger sneezed
into a Kleenex,
he said to himself,
It’s my protest
about not being
in warm, sunny Phoenix.
I won’t give up the shorts
in spite of the old folks’ snorts.
Sitting at the counter,
he placed two warm napkins
on his knees
and asked the waitress
if he could have two more
napkins, please.
With knees warmed
and a stomach full of
hot coffee,
the jogger headed for
the door.
“Hey, what’s youz hurry?
Gunna go out and
jog some more?”
the old Dutchman chortled.
The jogger spun around,
“Heck, there’s not enough
white stuff on the ground.
I’m going out to do my snow dance,”
he said, and whirled and whorled
right out the door.

He’s about thirty-two percent English.
He speaks English.
He writes in English.
The English are a bloody bunch.
Their history, like that of everyone
else, is bloody, violent, murderous.
Therefore, is the language, Old
English, Elizabethan English,
St. James’ English bloody, too?
He’s about forty-five percent Swedish.
He doesn’t speak Swedish,
except for a few words and
a nursery rhyme.
He doesn’t write in Swedish.
The Swedes were a bloody
bunch of Vikings,
raping, pillaging, murdering.
They aren’t so bloody now
but still the bloodiness is
bred in the bone.
He could trace it back
to Cain, the metaphorical Everyman,
and whatever
was Cain’s language,
bloody as it was.
Maybe, it isn’t the bloody
language, but how the
bloody hell the bloody
words are used —
for bloody cursing or
bloody blessing.