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Walking

Clea took my hand and we swung arms like little kids. At college, I would never hold hands walking down the street. But here, I didn’t care who saw me or what they thought.

Lakestone, Minnesota

My heart bristled a little around the edges at the mention of Anna, but it was more like the wings of a bird, hit and dead on the highway, whose feathers flutter a moment from the movement of a passing Chevy.

First Kiss

At church camp, in a air raid shelter in wartime England, on an old flatbed trailer

Graduation

It was a perfect day, the sky clear, as blue and true as a pledge of love. On the campus, the magnolias were in bloom, the huge, creamy-white flowers richly fragrant. Spring was everywhere, shamelessly beautiful, wet lips laughing, hair unpinned.

The Wounded Father

No Pretty Country

I have not been close to my mother. We have been friendly, conventional, conversational — not close. I felt her love as a black hole, waiting to suck me in. I danced cautiously around its rim. Now it is safe to come close. It always was safe.

Kudzu Dreams

I was a child with a peculiar and passionate hunger for the peppermint in toothpicks when I went on a lion hunt with Opal Lavender, who was my favorite person and one of my own people.

The Evolutionary Leap

An Interview With Patricia Sun

I think we’re in the middle of an evolutionary leap, a leap predicted by religions all over the world. . . . We’re in the middle of a leap in our consciousness and capacity to perceive; the way we think and the way we take in information is changing. Psychic phenomena, intuitive ability, healing, and creativity are all a part of this leap.

A Night Swim

Phillip Fanno was playing with his food. He gave his pork chop a mashed potato beard and moustache, a julienned-carrot nose and mouth, and, not finding suitable eyes on his plate, cast about the table for them.

A Dictionary Of Childhood

Because I had found it hard to attend to anything less interesting than my thoughts, I was difficult to teach.

William Butler Yeats,
Reveries over Childhood and Youth (1916)