He held the wooden clothespin
in his hand, turned it over,
squeezed the ends and watched
the jaws open and close.
For a few seconds he played a
ventriloquist. He would
talk to the clothespin and the
clothespin would answer.
He wondered if the dog noticed
that his lips moved when
the clothespin talked. He thought
back to the days
when laundry was hung on a
clothesline in the back-
yard — sheets, pillowcases, white,
cotton underwear (Bobby,
When you start washing your own
clothes, don’t ever mix colors.
It should be all whites or all colors.)
He stood in the kitchen
watching his mother in the yard wear-
ing her summer dress and
her ubiquitous apron while hanging
all the laundry with wooden
clothespins. Then he closed the bag
of white cheddar popcorn
sealed it with the old, wooden clothes-
pin and returned the bag
to the pantry where it would join the
other wooden clothespin and
a blue plastic clothespin charged 
with                                                                                  keeping the snacks fresh —
the delicious, mostly multi-colored snacks
in multi-colored bags.

They stuffed it so far down in the down mattress
The mites might never find it.
They dropped it off such a high cliff
The dinosaur bones ran when it plunged through the ground.
They shot it so high in the sky
The Russian monkey wet its diaper.
After all that, in utter exhaustion, they slumped to the floor
And it perched on the fireplace mantel,
Looked them straight in the eye
And simply said, “I love you.” It happens.

Once again, we wait
for the micro-revelation
in all of creation
down to the smallest DNA
compactly embodied
in one human
so we could see and touch
divine DNA
to go with the macro-revelation
in all of creation
up to the biggest DNA
lavishly embodied
in all of creation
so we could see and touch
divine DNA
and then we stand in awe
of creation
and with elation
look into ourselves
and see and touch
and revel in
divine DNA.

*idea from a meditation by Richard Rohr

Why does Washington hate us?
What did we ever do to you?
We, at least, pay taxes. That’s a plus.
We are the middle class, working class, lower class through and through.

We are the bedrock of the nation.
I would think you would celebrate who we are.
We need to lift those in economic trepidation
not abandon them to feathers and tar.

This may go down as the meanest administration
trying to cut off much of any support or aid
while feathering corporate beds to our consternation.
Do you hope that we all will just fade

away so more dollars can go into national defense,
a faux answer to fears and insecurities galore?
Don’t corporations know our contribution would be immense?
With economic security, we would buy that much more?

But Washington has been bought and sold
by lobbyists with one percenters’ money to burn
and legislators, mostly big, fat, white and old,
wouldn’t know an honest day’s wages to earn.

But we, the bedrock of the nation, caused a rout;
we flexed our muscle, voted and threw the biggest bum out.

I mean really you have to give
the guy credit. The audacity of
hope translated into the audacity

of grift in just a few short years.
I mean really he’s on his way out
the door and he’s got this pay

to play pardons game going. I
mean really apparently he can’t
help himself. It’s what he knows

and he only knows and so at
least he’s being true to himself,
which, of course, is what every

dyed in the wool solipsist would
do, because there isn’t anything
else for them to do and maybe

for that, just that, we can have
a bit of pity after he’s out the
door and in custody, that is,

maybe….

sun shone brightly; wind
whipped from the west over dunes
down shivering necks.

She said that they are selling their souls
faster than Amazon is selling stuff on
Cyber Monday, Tuesday and for however
long Amazon is going to carry out the
gimmick, which reflects the wholesale
gimmicky forfeiture of anything resemb-
ling integrity. At least with Amazon, she
thought, you get something in the mail
that has some use and right now she is
wondering just what use there is to the
legislative, cyber sell-off of soul after soul.

He watched the elderly man walk across
the lawn with his three grandchildren in
tow. The little girl walked next to the 

man followed by her younger brother and 
older brother. Then the little brother 
wanted to be next to his grandfather so 

he rushed up and walked between his sister 
and his grandfather. The grandfather gently 
placed his hand on the little boy’s head, 

tousled the boy’s hair and the four walked 
on, the older boy dragging behind as if 
bored with the whole ordeal. Watching this 

scene, the observer wondered how the grand-
father could be so cruel and uncaring toward 
so many others. Then again, maybe the grand-

father is just caring for himself reflected 
in the grandchildren. Still, he thought, it 
was a touching scene. Then he thought about 

his own cruelty and his feelings toward his 
grandchildren and then he heard the echo
reverberating in his head and heart, 

"for all have...fallen short...."