Artemisia

We are all students and teachers by turns. Of mice and men, dollars and sins, winners who lose and losers who win.

Of fathers, sons, houses, hearts, full bottles and empty holes.

The Hand at work, reconciling my unnecessary guilt using mountains, mailmen and Marines.

They say if you peer too long into the abyss, it will begin to look back at you.

The tragedy of his wife's condition had been perfectly met by the care and tenderness of her husband. It was a daily lesson for me.

On the adaptability of crows and men when eating lunch in the urban outdoors of our era.

In which, at long last, I allow myself to cry.

On finding your family, pondering hidden siblings and a tribute to my friend, Ms. Judy Joe.

In which a man in a wheelchair teaches me not to judge a book by its cover.

In which I learn of the purpose and fate of a poem I wrote twenty years before my retirement.

Introduction to Recollections of a Vancouver Letter-carrier.