Monthly Archives: August 2019

They Gave the Indians Blankets Laced with Smallpox.

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I found two of these plates at the Goodwill years ago. They hold an electric, magnetic charge. They were the Amherst College dining hall plates into the 1970s. Into the 1970s. It is a dark, rueful pleasure to use them. Memento mori.

Photo from: Peter d’Errico, “Jeffery Amherst and Smallpox Blankets: Lord Jeffery Amherst’s letters discussing germ warfare against American Indians,” 2001, 2019. Accessed on October 19, 2019, at https://people.umass.edu/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html

Just After Twilight

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There is no end to the blame
Or the depths of pain.

We all bear not only our own history
But our ancestry.

There’s no way to even the score.

We must, like children, cry,

Olly olly all come free!

Olly olly oxen free is a catchphrase used in children's games such as hide and seek, capture the flag, and kick the can, to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game, that position of the sides has changed, or, alternatively, that the game is entirely over.
Olly olly oxen free is a catchphrase used in children’s games such as hide and seek, capture the flag, and kick the can, to indicate that players who are hiding can come out into the open without losing the game, that position of the sides has changed, or, alternatively, that the game is entirely over.

Back to the Garden

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Not one more word.
I will go back to gardening,
Which is really all I ever do anyway.

I don’t know why these moods come upon me–
Why I cannot stay.

I know. I do know.
Seasons change.
I am an annual blown by the wind
Visiting established gardens.

They don’t know who I am
And I am gone again.


“Not to love is a failure of the imagination.”
I know someone said this to me once or I read it but I can’t remember who or where.
It came into my head this morning,
Watching rainbow prisms upon the wall.

I will care for my garden.


(Where my garden meets your garden is also my garden.)

Blessed Are the Trodden

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Blessed are the trodden, with their faces in the dirt,
Who process what the rest refuse to see.

The thing most do not know
Is that without exception each must deal with their own shit–
Ain’t no way another can take your load.

Neither cash nor coercion can contract that labor out.