Travelling abroad would be so much easier if I stuck with my native tongue. But I can’t, not when I’m standing on foreign soil and know three or four dozen words each of Spanish, Italian and French. Foreign words spew out of my mouth like coins from a slot machine. When I'm lucky, they match [...]
A rose is a rose. The wine is rosé. On the question of accents, Writers seem so blasé. Why skip the accent that belongs on café? Should the bride’s gown be called lame, When the fabric’s lamé? And don’t get me started on resume for résumé. Webster’s is nuts to call that lapse [...]
Take it from me, and just say no thanks To tent-camping in Frisco on the dune-strewn Outer Banks Where the wind always blows And chills exposed toes. Ditto for feet, knees and shanks. Camp showers are frigid. I get goose bumps so rigid I nick each one shaving my legs. Campsites have no water [...]
Back in the day when I was still young, Nobody called me Young Lady Any more than they called me Shorty or Slim of Kind of Afraidy. But old men now seem to think that they ought To call me Young Lady when I clearly am not. Do they think I like this backhanded [...]
Regarding iguanas, I have no strong view, Though two of my neighbors most certainly do. When winter brought us a sub-40 breeze, It made the green reptiles literally freeze And fall like apples from high in the trees. Yet, the creatures were still alive. The lucky stiffs indeed did revive Under the good [...]
Like all great writers, I keep a journal. I might write like them too, if mine were diurnal.
I’m on Assateague Island, stalking wild ponies. There’s a mom with her colt and three of their cronies. Two stallions nearby are kicking and fighting. Now one of them’s biting. Oh, how exciting! Over there’s a pair doing the thing That graces the herd with new pony offspring. So I grab my camera and [...]
Nobody would think any less of me if I brought a six-pack of Old Milwaukee to a picnic or ordered a Margarita made with house tequila in a swanky cantina. But admit my favorite wine comes in a $7 screw-cap bottle and I’d be labeled a tasteless dork by anyone who knows a thing or [...]
Though I like to believe I’m perfectly sane, Something I do makes me question this brain. I bite my lip or my inner cheek Munching an apple or nuts, though rarely a leek. I do it accidently, and not just once, But for days on end in a maddening streak. One day, who knows [...]
Sometimes I worry what the future will bring With coral reefs dying, And rivers drying, And toxic liquids going down our drains, And bigger and wetter hurricanes, With entire species disappearing While California forests keep on searing. But the news these days my fears allay With a governor telling teachers, “Don’t say gay,” And [...]