dogs are for teaching kindness and gentleness

and that in spite of your doubts, perhaps you are capable of loving some good, warm being outside of your own

but sometimes they stop. the breath and the heart first, and then the warmth follows.

and so we and our mothers pick out places in our backyards- nice, thoughtful, shaded ones near the lillies we've taken from house to house. our fathers patiently lean against their shovels and wait.

my own father digs until his back is sore, walks back into the house in dirtied jeans, crouches under the table placing his measuring tape against the length of the cold body's back, and digs some more. four feet long. bigger than he remembered.

we wrap him in a yellow blanket. everyone takes a corner. the tongue lolls out of his mouth, eyes roll back. but he's still sweet, i think. his limbs have stiffened, however and he seems heavier. somehow. as if the life that ran away, left a heavy weight in its place.

we lower him gently. first a eulogy brought to us by mary oliver : "love, love love/then, go to sleep/give up your body heat, your beating heart/then, trust"

a few more words and a closing prayer given by my father about creation and goodness and if there is a doggie heaven please save a space.

dirt is sprinkled. ashes to ashes. dust to dusted. and we stand and watch as my father carries on filling up the empty hole. he avoids covering the face, until at last, he has no choice, and then - gently. very gently.

after the service we return to our home. we sit at our table and eat our ham on bun.
and no one comes running when a pickle drops to the ground.

summer `10

is here.
and reminding me to be in love with the world for all its many possibilities.
especially the green grassy farmlands that i drove through last night
and the unfolding of pink sky that some poet once cleverly named as "steeping"

because few listen to what happens here, this will mostly be a practice place for the summer
where i write shitty first drafts and bumblings without much thought to my audience. (sorry - but it's for the better for now)

so, if you're here, welcome. i'm glad.
i'll try my best to show up regularly as well.

here is the news i want to share with you:
my dear professor, Doug Frank, from my fall semester out at the Oregon Extension just published a new book called A Gentler God: Breaking free of the Almighty in the company of the human Jesus If you click the link it will give you more information about the book and you should also look at the reviews., brought to you by people like : brian mclaren, debbie blue, rob bell, and david james duncan.

I suspect that it will be great.

yours, LLW

in the library

a darling and round little boy who waddled
and a grandmother who came in looking for him

"come on we have to go"
"grandma they have arabic books here!" and then to the librarian, "do you have arabic books here?"
"yes, we do have some."
"thats our language!!"


so good.

i'm finishing up the brother's k and this one is a real gem that i just came upon.  thought i ought to share:

"he said there are two ways for a hitter to get the pitch he wants.  the simplest way is not to want any pitch in particular.  but the best way, he said--which sounds almost the same, but is really very different--is to want the very pitch you're gonna get.  including the one you can handle.  but also the one that's gonna strike you out looking.  and even the one that's maybe gonna bounce off your head."   - david james (i'm going to meet him soon) duncan 

now listen to this one more thing:

"dismiss whatever insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every moment and joint in your body." - walt whitman

the tooth fairy came and she brought a dollar!

the girl at the pool today sat down right beside me

silently for a moment but then:

"would you like me to let you see the hole in my mouth one more time?"

"yes.  i would love that."

what if you could slow down time enough to embroider the sunset?

that would probably be marvelous.

this is very nice of course

"I said, I want to tell you something. She said, you can tell me tomorrow. I had never told her how much I loved her. She was my sister. We slept in the same bed. There was never a right time to say it. It was always unnecessary. I thought about waking her. But it was unnecessary. There would be other nights. And how can you say I love you to someone you love? I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her. Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar. It's always necessary. I love you."  j.s. foer