Photo by Joe Connelly, Elizabethtown, KY

Possibly an Eastern Phoebe

Gay Guard-Chamberlin’s “Dear Coffee” is a prose poem.

Dear Coffee

All the other times I’ve tried to leave, I’ve come crawling back, but this time I mean it, things have gone too far. Granted, I may not be thinking as clearly without you by my side, but you can really get on a person’s nerves, and when I think of the nights of high anxiety, the stomachaches you’ve given me, my insane cravings for your strong embrace, it’s no wonder we’ve been on-again/off-again for years. 

Herbal? Tea? you snort contemptuously. You’ll find no passion there! Okay, maybe I do want to play it safe but I need a lover who treats me right, does no harm, can ease me into sleep, gives me room to meditate.

Java, my darling, you old charmer, there is no one who smells as good as you first thing in the morning, and it’s true you always make my heart beat faster, but please don’t look at me that way you do, begging me (at my age!) to stay up and dance with you until four. No, no more. Here’s your hat.

There’s the door.

~  Gay Guard-Chamberlin

From Red Thread Through a Rusty Needle (New Wind Publishing, 2019).

How Winston Churchill Learned to Speak so Audiences Listened

A Study in Oratory (click for full article)

Ringo Starr is Still Burning Bright, October 16, 2019

Bob Dylan once said all songs were already written and floating around the universe, and it’s up to the songwriter to capture them and write them down. Do you agree with that?
Well, in many ways I really understand what he’s saying. But all we need is one line and then we can write a song. Once I put a baseball cap on backwards and went to an event in Los Angeles and the cap said “Life is good.” Because of that, they sent me a t-shirt and a book and a lot of stuff. So anyway, I’m sitting in my room with (co writer) Gary Burr (trying to write a song) and we don’t have anything. Nothing. It’s not coming out of the air. We’re just like... I don’t know. But I happen to look at the coffee table and a book was on there that said “Life is good,” and we then we wrote a song from that. We need to just get a kick, and then we can finish any song. —Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr is Still Burning Bright (click here for full article)

Paul in The Hamptons, Aug. 18, 2019

Dropping  Off His Guitar

Photo two years ago by Richard Porter

If I Were Blind by Frank Criscenti

In honor of one of my favorite poets during National Poetry Month

FC 12/8/14

If I were blind

I could feel your spirit

if you were

across the waters

If I were senseless

I'd have a sense of you

You wash in the river

that flows to the sea

I feel you there

as the waves lap upon my feet

I can taste your presence

in the rain that falls.

I watched a blind boy

swimming in the ocean

calling to his father,

to sense his nearness

to the shore.

“How am I doing,” the blind boy called,

listening for his father's voice.

If I were blind

I could sense your nearness

even if you were silent

You are the ocean, the shore, 

and the voice.

The waves

fall on the sand

in murmurs

that sound like

the breeze amongst the trees.

I feel you

singing in my ear

in soft

loving

whispers.