Oswego
Entries 485
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Close encounters of the reptilian kind in Daydreaming on the Porch
Growing up in Louisiana, I’ve always been fascinated by alligators. There is something about these ancient, dinosaurian reptiles that strikes both cautious fear and wonder in me. And now where I...
It’s only April 20, but it feels like an early summer day when those sweet memories of sun and fun at the beach come back to me from more carefree times. Back in the 1960s, we never thought that...
I’ve written often about a special place very near and dear to my heart, Folly Beach, located on the Atlantic Ocean about 10 miles from where I live. It’s a diverse and eclectic hodgepodge of peo...
AUNT BEE: Remember, first you eat the sandwiches, and then you eat the apple pie. Not the apple pie and then the sandwiches. Do you understand? OPIE: Yeah, I understand, even if it doesn’t seem r...
Now they say phone addiction is leading to all kinds of mental health problems among young people. Which is probably true. They spend multiple hours a day scrolling TikTok shorts; keeping up wi...
I mark the summer’s swift decline; The springing sward its grave-clothes weaves. Oh, could I catch the sounds remote? Could I but tell to human ear The strains which on the breezes float And...
The meeting story of my mom and dad in Charleston in 1947, when he was in the Merchant Marine, is legend. My mother was quite beautiful and refined. A Southern girl through and trough from a good...
This past Thursday on a cool March day in early Spring, I wandered transfixed by the beauty of azaleas in bloom at Middle Place Gardens, one of the most beautiful and historic public gardens in ...
Awe and wonder can be experienced everywhere in Daydreaming on the Porch
When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to ...
Second Mill Pond Revisited in Daydreaming on the Porch
It is late at night and I’m tired, but I want to record some thoughts I’ve been mulling over lately. They deal with the subject of memory. I’ve been thinking a lot about that word and all that it...
Time, memory, poetry and mortality in Daydreaming on the Porch
Time By Kevin Time Slow, lonely Tiring, boring, stopped Minute, hand, number, second Lengthened, endless, explored, black, scary Space Poem written by one of my students in the fall of 19...
What exactly is a healthy mind? in Daydreaming on the Porch
A healthy mind knows how to hope; it identifies and then hangs on tenaciously to a few reasons to keep going. Grounds for despair, anger, and sadness are, of course, all around. But the healthy m...
A desert spring and oasis are symbolic of eternal things in Daydreaming on the Porch
There are few natural features of the landscape more symbolic of life than a perennial spring in the desert. In my Wyoming Atlas and Gazeteer, springs are represented by a little circle and curvi...
It’s been four years since my mother passed away in January 2020, just a few months before the onset of the horrible and deadly Covid pandemic. I’m so thankful she didn’t have to endure the poss...
The right recliner chair is pure bliss in Daydreaming on the Porch
How amazing to be vindicated in such a way. I was reading a profile of a talented chef/restaurateur, manager of a notable eating establishment in our city. And, he said that his most valuable per...
The great 19th century French novelist Balzac wrote, “When chilling winter shows his icy face, [camellias] bloom for a world that vainly seeks delight.” But camellias provide that delight like ...
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste… Shakespeare Sonnets...
Clouds signify the intermediate world between the visible and the hidden, the present and the absent. They are symbolic of forms as phenomena always in a state of metamorphosis, which both obscur...
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough! Thy winds, thy wide grey skies! Thy mists, that roll and rise! Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag And all but cry with colour! That gaun...
Yes, it’s the week before Christmas and a lot is going on, for most people, that is. Being a single hermit-like creature of habit, this is the time of year when lack of my own family hits harder....
There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery they enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations. Washington Irving The soul that sees beaut...
I have reached a certain age in life, 72, wherein every day I am aware that time is more precious and fleeting than it was the day or week or month before. I am in a period of assessing my li...
How very fortunate I was to briefly be a teacher many years ago in Daydreaming on the Porch
It was a school day in the fall of 1982, and I was an English teacher. The class had been doing some brainstorming and pre-writing exercises, I think, around the topics of aging and loneliness...
East Main Street in the small Washington County [N.C] town of Plymouth was a cool and hospitable place on a summer afternoon. Trees spread their dark, green branches across the sidewalk, forming ...
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” in Daydreaming on the Porch
Many years ago, in what now seems like a past life, I was an English teacher. I loved teaching poetry to students right at the cusp of their high school years, who for the first time had cogniti...
