Here is a poem that takes aim at our clichés about aging and death. It does so with subtle cleverness, by putting “in tandem” an old spruce tree and the nursing home resident to whom the poem is addressed. Though there’s no stanza break, the poem divides into two parts, each of nine lines. The…

Last summer we revisited Santa Fe and the Glen Workshop, an annual pilgrimage of sorts, searching for renewal of body and soul. In pondering my faith, I sometimes ask myself, “Am I building on a rock, or on a slippery beach that reconfigures itself every time the tide changes?” Maybe something in between—sandstone, friable and…

I have had three or four truly excellent teachers in my life—teachers who not only made lights come on for me, but who challenged and pushed me so far beyond boundaries that were previously comfortable that I was never able to return. David Miller of Mississippi College was one of those teachers for me. When…