As he read the rough-hewn
words of the poet – short words,
short break lines,
descriptive of the woods,
hills, forests, dusty boots,
dirty overalls and rolled
cigarettes, he began
to hear
the poems in Sam’s voice,
the rough-hewn voice of
either Shepard or Elliott;
take your pick. Then
his mind roamed to
Ram Tough and he
realized he had been
watching
too much T.V.

He always prided himself for
praying before meals. It was
the way it was when he was
a kid and then he got away
from it in college.

He doesn’t remember ever bowing
before the first sip of beer and
crack of the shell of the green,
pickled egg at the bar two blocks
from campus.

He picked it back up again in
seminary. It was what was done.
Everybody prayed before the meager
meals prepared in the basement
of the dorm. You might bow in
silence if eating by yourself,
(out of sincerity or someone
might walk in) but everybody
took a turn where two or three
were gathered.

And at the coffee hours after
chapel, faculty and staff
would be obliged to pray.
He would go to coffee to
socialize though often
missing chapel itself
to play pool in the bowels
of the building.

Praying at meals was the
thing to do when he married
and had children. He wanted
to raise the kids with a sense
of reverence and gratitude.

In parishes, he became the
designated pray-er. It was
obligatory for him to pray at
social gatherings like church
suppers; he was the pastor
after all; and with friends, he
was the only minister in the
group. He was the professional
religious person having had
hands laid on and no one else
seemed particularly comfortable
offering grace.

Then the kids left, his first
wife died, he’s been remarried
for twenty years. He reads daily
meditations by theologians, two
priests actually, interesting
for a protestant, which come
his way via the internet.

Often, he shares these with
his wife along with the poems
of the day that also come his
way before he and his wife
sit down to breakfast.

Then they just start eating or
sometimes have a moment of
silence. The silence is good.
The old words just don’t
seem up to the mystery.

The Chocolate Lab is content to
sit and stare a the man, stare
into his eyes, actually; he
thinks dogs stare if they are
scared or apprehensive and just
want to keep and eye on another,
but this is different. This is
affection. He’d never known a
dog to do that; He thought it
wasn’t a dog thing and he knew
that people are never to stare
at a dog because the dog will
interpret that as aggression
and you don’t want a dog gett-
ing aggressive in return of that
stare, especially not a ninety-two
pounder, but the dog loves to
stare into the man’s eyes; the
dog has the biggest, most beautiful
brown eyes, and then the dog slowly
closes the lids and opens them again
in a sort of coquettish, come hither
way which the man knows the dog
doesn’t mean because that’s the man
anthropomorphizing the dog; he
thinks the dog is simply signaling
love; the dog is safe, secure,
appreciative and besides the man just
fed the dog dinner and then the dog
slides down to the floor, falls
asleep, breathes heavily
and snores.

He approached the table to let her know he was
around and would look at the piece of art but

that she should finish lunch with her friends.
He thought that was the polite thing to do.

He knew her two companions — one with dementia
and the other just looking that way. “Let sleep-

ing dogs lie,” and “Avoid a fool in his folly,”
came to mind so he decided not to engage but

to just move along, only later to be told he
was criticized by one lunch companion as be-

ing Mr. Hoity-Toity-Too-Good-To-Say-Hello. He
looked across the room and saw a former friend

now an acquaintance and decided to engage. The
acquaintance commented on the man’s extraversion

as if he were diseased, perhaps a gregarious
and supercilious leper, in comparison to the

acquaintance’s own eminently preferable intro-
version. He concluded that introverts really

do believe they are superior. To engage or
not to engage…. Some days neither pays.

We all stem from the creation that 
divided, 
	divided, 
		divided and 
multiplied, 
	multiplied, 
		multiplied 
			cell after cell after cell 
instantaneously in the explosion 
		of relational love 
that began to expand in 
	complexification and diversification to concrescence 
		in the unity of loving life. 
        And as the mystic addressed Brother Star,
          Sister Moon, we address all others as 
		brother and sister,
       for I am everything that is out there and 
	everything out there is in here, 
		in every cell of my being
        and my healing stems from the cells of love.

The man and his wife sat listening to
a relative discuss a dinner party the
relative had recently attended. She
analyzed why the other dinner party
attendees did certain things, why their
behavior was as it was and what fears
and phobias might motivate the party
goers. The relative seemed self-satisfied
with her acuity at this analysis likening
it to dissecting frogs in sophomore bio-
logy and laughed heartily at the other
people’s idiosyncrasies, foibles and
peculiarities. Then the man recalled
hearing about a friend who routinely
took a few empty wine bottles with
him to the store to be tossed in a
dumpster rather than placed in his
recycling bin for fear the garbage man
might think he was drinking too much.
The man was about to join in the
conviviality of gossip and share this
little anecdotal tidbit when suddenly
he grew pensive and thought about some-
thing he did recently hoping no one in
general and his wife and relative in
particular would ever know about and
in a comically karmic moment or a
karmically comic moment, he couldn’t
decide which, he smiled and thought,
sometimes silence really is golden.

He came on a short video of a writer being
interviewed. The aging writer with a distinct
but somewhat unplaceable accent looked at the
pretty, young, fawning, sycophant female,
placed his hands together in the gesture of
piety, respect, reverence and offered, “Namaste.”
The interviewer gushed with effusive praise
telling the writer and all the viewers that she
loved his writing (which was mostly editing),
that she had read all his books and that his
writing had opened her life and heart. The
writer smiled and nodded taking in such homage
with apparent humility and it was at that
moment the viewer wondered if behind the knowing
nod, the writer of wise and wonderful things
wasn’t simply wishing she would open her legs.

The Chocolate Lab doesn’t take
note of the time change; he just
goes by his body clock and the sun.
So, now he’s up and ready to rock
and roll an hour early while our
body clocks adjusted instantaneous-
ly because it was a fall-back and not
spring-forward meaning an extra
hour’s sleep. He wants to eat at
the same time, to give him a little
space, but an hour earlier for us. Then
at three p.m. he’s all herky-jerky in
front of the kitchen cupboard and
not paying any attention to his torn
ACL on his right leg or the arthritis
in his left elbow. He’s just thinking
dinner, treat, cookie behind the door
or whatever he names that which is
standing in his way to food; it doesn’t
matter what we call it, it all is the
same thing just as long as he gets it,
and soon. He’s not thinking four p.m.,
but I am and I will be thinking six a.m.
instead of seven a.m. tomorrow morning
and it’s then I know I will get my
revenge in the spring.

It’s 8:30 a.m. here and 3:30 p.m. there
and there isn’t much in common. Bombs
are bursting there; people are running all
over the place, tossing rocks, wielding
knives. There’s a replay on the internet of
a “gotcha” interview with a Muslim and a
Jew, the young balding Muslim being set
up to look very bad in spite of his call for
dialogue, understanding, non-violence, while
the blond as all get out, beautifully coiffed,
female interviewer, hired to affirm the place
of superiority for descendants of Northern
European Christians and their allegiance to
their tribal god’s eternal covenant with one
group over against the other listened to the
beautifully coiffed Jewish woman who just
kept attacking verbally the Muslim man with
inflammatory language while appealing to
emotion about religious wars and rumors of
wars while the interviewer concluded that it
was a great debate with a wink and a nod and
the man looked out his window to see the sun
rise over the dune and the golden oaks and the
blazing burning bush peaking through the pines
and said, “We all could use one of those right
now,” as a few fuchsia leaves fluttered to the
ground mingling with the needles. Isaac Albaniz’
(who once quipped in My Youthful Indiscretions,
“I am a Roman, I am a Christian, I am a Jew,
I am a Moor!”) peaceful guitar chords played
in the distance.

I just knew when I was ten that
the day of my liberation would
come, the day I would never
again have to hear the dreaded
sound of my mother’s voice calling,
“Robert Edwin, it’s your turn to
wash the dishes. Your sister will
dry.” And here I am sixty years
later just having washed the dishes.
At least I don’t have to hear my
mother’s voice ordering me into the
kitchen. I just go there automatic-
ally now with a cheerful voice say-
ing, “It was a great dinner, darling.”
And after I’ve made an omelet from
the leftovers from the previous even-
ing’s great dinner and we’ve eaten,
my wife will move to the sink, dirty
dishes in hand and say, “That was
a creative breakfast, dear. I’ll
take care of the dishes.”