Their faces and signs change day to day, but the spot is the same. They stand on the roadside of I-189 where it meets a stoplight on Route 7 in Burlington, Vermont. There are common characteristics: crumpled or dirty clothing, a tin can or open hand for the money, black…

The gruel of winter killed indiscriminately- someone’s memorial peony for an uncle slayed in the Holocaust, the niece’s grief a torrent of tears at the roots incredulous at fresh loss marking incomprehensible loss. My Peace rosebush gone, its delicate yellow blossoms rimmed with pink now memory, empty ground just feet away from purple lilacs with flush, fragrant cones and the occasional ice-burned branch tips, the neighbors that didn’t make it.

Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Please ask. Please tell. Imagine- The multitude of stories that live between eight words. Not just the one story, but all the secrets, grief, unimaginable truths that go begging for release left in silence. Numbed by alcohol. Coated in sugar. Veiled by drugs. Waiting for a whisper, the opening: Please ask. Please tell.

In each of us are seeds, bulbs bursting to sprout then green heralding buds to blossoms whispering flourish now.

little boy, maybe three Dad, behind him big arms wrapping small-small shoulders embrace and safety gate at the crosswalk’s edge their bodies a dance little smile rising, then giggle-wiggle from the envelope of stronger, bigger, “wait” Dad bending, then crouching behind to hold, hold, hold on until it’s safe Would the poem change with skin color? Would it matter if they are white, brown, black or any human variation? Would the tender moment shrink or shift limited by America’s racial gaze, its toxic slaps, traps and boxes?

Dinners at my house were two trenches distinguished by who and if. The palms of my mind start to sweat by remembering the two lived experiences cycling on the calendar, the most consistent part, the presence or absence of the white Corelle plates with the gold butterfly pattern. Every other…

The lake is vast to the eye and silver-blue in the changing light. I am swimming with and around others, a chosen resource present to their experiences, efforts, and stories through varying shallows and depths. Once in the lake, learning to stay afloat or swim is necessary for us all. …

An amused glint in her daddy’s eye, the sun catching highlights in wavy, brown hair as the little daughter rubbed his kiss off her cheek, a last joke between them now. His touch — stroke of life warming, a golden beam slipping between her fingers like fairy dust sparkling on the descent to earth captured here an ache over the heart, fleshed out into spring green as beams of sunshine strike the grass making a lush carpet of peridot and emerald returning her to the essence of being wrapped in the gestures of his love, a bright sprite and her Oberon.

New Year’s Meditation for 2022 New Year’s Meditation On the dawn of a new day on the cusp of a New Year may I awaken to my heart’s deepest longings, may I unburden my mind’s deepest fears and from the wellspring of body and breath find homecoming and the soaring sweetness of freedom.