Category Archives: Poems

Arkansas Dirt

Posted on December 27, 2025 | 3 comments

It’s just dirt.

Just regular old Arkansas

Dirt.

But on rare visits home

I am drawn to this particular

Patch like a fish to

Water.

Their names are there,

My Mom and my Dad.

Though they are not,

I go anyway

And against all logic

I speak to them there.

Sometimes I feel like a

Little boy,

Frightened

By a nightmare, seeking comfort

At their bedside in the dark.

Other times, I am a teenager

Checking in after cruising

West Kingshighway, an evening

Spent looking for love despite

Already being loved

Deeply.

Today, I am fifty-five years old

But am channeling the teenager

Checking in.

I say,

“I’m doing good.

We are good.

And happy.”

I even employ facial expressions

To be more convincing

And don’t even feel silly.

I tell them where we live now.

I tell them about their

Granddaughters.

It is a one-sided conversation but

I sense their smiles,

And then mine.

I don’t stay long.

I never do.

I know they aren’t there,

And that it’s just Arkansas

Dirt.

But to me it is the most fertile

Soil,

And my heart grows stronger

And fuller

Every time that I go.

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Be a Tourist Wherever You Are

Posted on November 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

Be a tourist wherever you are.

Walk around smiling in wonder at your surroundings,
As if for the first time.

Take way too many pictures. Don’t be ashamed.
Be on the lookout for all the beautiful things
you hope never to forget.

Drive slowly, and take in the sights.
You will piss off people who are in a hurry,
but that’s okay. Because you are a tourist,
enamored with your great privilege.

After all, and anyway, we are all just tourists
on this floating bed and breakfast we call
Planet Earth.

Live gratefully.
Today.

Be a tourist wherever you are.

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Warming Up for Thanksgiving. Or, Things I Am Grateful for That Get Less Attention.

Posted on November 19, 2023 | 2 comments
  • The Sunday paper.
  • An all-day breakfast menu.
  • Real books.
  • Salted peanut butter gelato.
  • Learning something new.
  • Remembering something special.
  • Forgetting something harmful.
  • Comfortable conversations.
  • Public parks.
  • Private restrooms.
  • A well-executed sacrifice bunt.
  • Gluten-free, double-stuf Oreo’s.
  • The first sight of a loved one arriving at the airport.
  • Watching others spot loved ones arriving at the airport.
  • Traveling somewhere new.
  • Then, coming home.
  • Trees changing colors.
  • Snow falling.
  • The sound of the ocean.
  • Light rain, and a picture window.
  • Ample parking.
  • Sweatshirt weather.
  • The price of bananas.
  • The word, simplify.
  • The fist bump phenomenon.
  • Making eye contact.
  • Holding hands.
  • Huggers.
  • Electric toothbrushes.
  • Backup cameras.
  • The Notes app.
  • Birthdays on Facebook.
  • Adult children.
  • Losing to my wife at cards.
  • Unexpected messages from an old friend, just because.
  • Dreams where I see my mom and dad again.
  • Maya Angelou speaking.
  • Bono singing.
  • Children playing.
  • Contemplating confusing art.
  • Standing desks.
  • Well-run meetings.
  • Handwritten, generally speaking.
  • Politics. (Ha! Just checking to see if you’re paying attention.)
  • Discovering a writer who thinks like you do.
  • Meeting someone different from you.
  • Getting your picture taken with friends (not alone).
  • Solitude, not loneliness.
  • Dad jokes.
  • Being bald (surprisingly).
  • Making the bed (after).
  • No alarm clock mornings.
  • Morning runs at sunrise.
  • Walking in the woods on a crisp day.
  • Comfortable shoes that still look good.
  • Looking at the horizon, both literally and conceptually.
  • A sense of wonder.
  • A sense of purpose.
  • A sense of accomplishment.
  • Genuine smiles, given and received.

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On All Saints Day

Posted on November 1, 2023 | 1 comment

Today is All Saints Day, and as I reflected on this special day on the Christian calendar, I came across a prayer inspired by Oscar Romero. Romero, as you may remember, was an El Salvadoran priest who stood in solidarity with the poor and was assassinated in 1980 just after delivering a sermon in a church-run hospital that cared for the terminally ill. This prayer was not written or spoken by Romero but is inspired by his words and composed in honor of his life and teaching. I think it is beautiful and appropriate for any day, but maybe especially today, on All Saints Day.

A Prayer of Oscar Romero

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything,
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders;
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future that is not our own.

Amen.

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Christmas Candles

Posted on December 23, 2019 | 2 comments

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Howard Thurman at Marsh Chapel March 6, 1959

I Will Light Candles This Christmas — by Howard Thurman

Candles of joy, despite all sadness,
Candles of hope where despair keeps watch.
Candles of courage for fears ever present,
Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days,
Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens,
Candles of love to inspire all my living,
Candles that will burn all the year long.

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If You Can’t Stand the Heat

Posted on June 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

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Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

I remember a scene in the movie, Glory, when the brave soldiers of the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry are sailing down a lazy river into the South. One says, “Welcome home, boys,” and another replies, “I forgot how hot it is down here.”

Given our recent move and our present heat wave, let’s just say that I have been remembering that line on a daily basis.

So far, I have surprisingly enjoyed the heat. I often say that I prefer hot to cold, but I have secretly wondered if that would prove true once removed from idyllic Malibu weather and back in the land of summertime heat and humidity. Well, so far, so good.

I am so white that at times I’m invisible and have already had two skin cancers carved out of neck, so it is a bad idea for me to spend much time in the actual sunshine. But I have noticed in my walks to and from and around campus the fantastic feeling of sunshine on skin.

Paul Laurence Dunbar is one of America’s first modern black poets, and he described the summer heat in almost sensual terms in his beautiful poem, A Summer’s Night.

The night is dewy as a maiden’s mouth, 
The skies are bright as are a maiden’s eyes,
Soft as a maiden’s breath, the wind that flies
Up from the perfumed bosom of the South.

Like sentinels, the pines stand in the park;
And hither hastening like rakes that roam,
With lamps to light their wayward footsteps home,
The fire-flies come stagg’ring down the dark.

I realize that summer has not officially arrived, but that doesn’t stop me from being there in my mind as I delightfully stagger home among the fireflies.

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Seize the Day(light)

Posted on May 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

Bed in Summer

Summer is officially a full month away, but on a university campus that recently put its final graduation ceremony to bed, it now feels like summer. Parking is suddenly fantastic. Campers will arrive soon. Neighbors are flung all over the world. And excepting the nuisance of May Gray and June Gloom, there are more hours of daylight to enjoy.

I love this time of year when the sun shows up early and goes home late. Life just seems full, and opportunities abound. Early morning runs are much easier when the sun beats you out of bed, and coming home from work is simply happier when the world is still bright. It makes me feel a little like a child again.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem, “Bed in Summer,” shares the perspective of a poor kid who isn’t very fond of winter but loves summer so much that having to obey parents at bedtime is torture!

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

 
I get it, kiddo. You know, today is Monday, and it is going to be Monday all day long. But it feels like a summer kind of Monday to me. And since I am officially a grown-up trying to hold on to a childlike heart, I can soak up the day for as long as I want and go to bed when I want to!

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That Inward Eye

Posted on May 7, 2018 | Leave a comment

Picasso SolitudeI will head to the Idaho-Washington border tomorrow to spend a few days alone on a personal retreat—heaven for an introvert and a planner. Serving a church family that follows an academic calendar makes this the perfect time for such a thing. There is time to breathe and work to do, and there are dreams to dream and plans to develop. I am ready for all of this and more.

Solitude is an excellent work space and a good planning partner. There is something magical about standing at attention, all alone, listening for still, small whispers transported on air. I cannot wait.

I recall Wordsworth’s vivid description from over two centuries ago of a solitary cloud floating over thousands of golden daffodils and then an inner state of being that he can access so that his happy heart dances among those spectacular flowers. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I love about solitude.

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud – by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

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The Fan

Posted on April 23, 2018 | 3 comments

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THE FAN (a free verse poem by Al Sturgeon)

The memory arrived unprompted as a tender gift.

I had been sunburned yet again.

It was night as I lay in bed, miserable,

motionless, and cursing myself

for an apparent inability to learn a lesson.

 

I was a teenager, alone in that tiny bedroom,

alone with my restless imagination, naked

as a modest kid in a modest family could get

to ease the pain, limbs sprayed like a

hopeless summer attempt at a snow angel.

 

My mother had tried her best to provide

some lotion as a remedy but to no avail.

I would simply be miserable until I wasn’t;

there was nothing more to do but listen to

the silent sound of time passing.

 

But squeezed into the corner was an oscillating fan.

It stood watch through the night, keeping me company,

marking time with its fluttering whir, rhythmically sending

a breeze both soothing and not across my blistered skin—

a welcomed sensation in solitary confinement.

 

The rhythm led to a mindless world of nothingness.

No thought of the terrible fate of dressing in the morning.

No self-loathing. Just staring into dark eyelids with

my sweet parents next door; at peace, listening, awaiting

the consistent and predictable relief from the oscillating fan.

 

The memory arrived out of nowhere.

For a brief moment I was a kid again

with a mom and a dad who would answer

if I simply called their names. It was so real

that I could hear the whirring fan and feel the gentle breeze.

 

 

 

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This Is a New Year – by Howard Thurman

Posted on January 1, 2018 | 1 comment

Happy-New-Year-Wishes-2018-1

This is a New Year. The calendar says so. I note the fact by marking it so when I wish to designate the day and the year as distinguished from some other day and year. It may be that my contract says so. It is indicated clearly in the lease I signed or the agreement I attested. It is curious how much difference can be marked between the two dates — December 31 and January 1.

Yet there are many things that move unchanged, paying no attention to a device like the calendar or arrangements such as contracts or leases. There is the habit pattern of an individual life. Changes in that are not noted by the calendar, even though they may be noted on the calendar. Such changes are noted by events that make for radical shifts in values or the basic rearrangement of purposes. There are desires of the heart or moods of the spirit that may flow continuously for me whatever year the calendar indicates. The lonely heart, the joyful spirit, the churning anxiety may remain unrelieved, though the days come and go without end.

But, for many, this will be a New Year. It may mark the end of relationships of many years’ accumulation. It may mean the first encounter with stark tragedy or radical illness or the first quaffing of the cup of bitterness. It may mean the great discovery of the riches of another human heart and the revelation of the secret beauty of one’s own. It may mean the beginning of a new kind of living because of marriage, of graduation, of one’s first job. It may mean an encounter with God on the lonely road or the hearing of one’s name called by Him, high above the noise and din of the surrounding traffic. And when the call is answered, the life becomes invaded by smiling energies never before released, felt, or experienced. In whatever sense this year is a New Year for you, may the moment find you eager and unafraid, ready to take it by the hand with joy and with gratitude.

  • Howard Thurman, The Mood of Christmas, 124 (1973).

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