Browse Topics

Where There Is No Other

Great Expectations

Bringing someone back to life, going through fertility treatments, spending more time with family

Moving In

As I walk along these cold floors to your room I hear the sweep of my nightgown sliding like a breeze through my aching legs. I am tired, Hanna, worn out from carrying too many boxes into this borrowed home full of someone else’s love for the color green. Why are you calling me now?

Games People Play

Yet even the oppressed oppress one another — hoarding just a little, worrying more about their kids than those next door. The illusion of separateness is a game played by rich and poor alike: the game that I’m in here, you’re in there; that these bodies are separate nations.

The Value Of Trees

The Pacific crashes into mountains here, with no introductory foothills, few beaches. Highway 1, the only north-west road in Big Sur, dips and swerves like a roller coaster. First you’re flying up in the redwoods, breathing eucalyptus and fog; straight below are tiny coves and river mouths. It’s a descent you feel in your stomach. Then you’re skimming along the beach under a kaleidoscope of sea gulls.

TV Guide

I took a job in an area lacking electricity. Our daughters were two and four when we moved, and had had almost no contact with television. We lived for the next nine years without television.

Trail’s End

I know I’m in trouble when N. starts saving for a tent and sleeping bags. Then she brings home a book with the ominous title, North Carolina Hiking Trails. Actually, I’m fond of hiking, especially if I can relax at the end of the day with a bed and a bath. But to my wife, this is like washing down a gourmet dinner with a Dr. Pepper. She wants an experience of nature unmediated by civilized comfort. She wants to show me and J., her thirteen-year-old son, how to rough it.

Selected Poems

The Nosebleed

When the children were small and woke with fear in the night, they came into our room and stood breathing quietly by the side of the bed, waiting. They never waited on Dan’s side, but always on mine.

Home Is Where

Having once lived for a year in a van, I knew what the real luxuries were: a bed to sleep on, a light to read by, a roof to keep me dry. I liked beautiful things, but I understood the difference between living elegantly and living expensively.