Whispering Pines

In the 1980s we considered buying one of several available houses in a former resort community of pre-turn of the century homes. They were simple and hardly outfitted with modern electricity. There was one bare bulb hanging from the center of the room with a pull chain to turn it on and off; you could see the electrical conduit running over the plaster to reach it. No switches existed on the walls. You had a kitchen with space to eat, a parlor or living room, a couple bedrooms and a single bathroom. All were painted white or pale green, chipped and peeling underneath the newest coat.

The old home was not really neglected, just never remodeled as if it was content without outlets on every wall, appliances filling the kitchen and fancy fixtures in each room. It could provide light at night, a roof over your head and a place to cook and eat your food.

What an act of defiance to find the homes intact and present together, almost as if they had collaborated daring anyone to modernize, saying, “We have been here for almost a century and do not require changes to be viable; we need not take on the accessories of modernity to be worthy or useful.”

We Should Have Taken Better Care of Him

Paul Laurence Dunbar and Byron Herbert Reece - two poets who both died young, suffered with tuberculosis and struggled to achieve time for their craft with so much of their energy necessarily spent simply earning money to live.

Today I recognized the similarity while reading a short biography of Dunbar. Occasionally you will hear someone say, "If you could sit down and talk with anyone from the past who would you choose?" I want to speak with Paul Laurence Dunbar; better yet, I want to meet with him and James Weldon Johnson together (they were friends). I would love to be a fly on the wall while they conversed.

It is said verse literally flowed from Dunbar. He wrote:

"I do not believe that a young man, whose soul is turbulent with a message which should be given to the world through the pulpit or the press, should shut his mouth and shoe horses."

How many messages from Reece and Dunbar and so many others have gone unheard? I like to think a time will come when the import of unspoken yearnings and unfulfilled achievements will be realized.

Many are familiar with Maya Angelou's autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This is the full poem the title comes from, written by Dunbar entitled, "Sympathy."

I am grateful he chose to speak the turbulence of his soul though he died at the age of thirty-three. We should have taken better care of him.

Spark in a Dying Fire

Reflections on “Frost at Midnight”


If only we could be free, as ash floating from the embers.
No restraints, no responsibilities; no schedules or accountability.

The infant sleeps soundly, at peace in such a way no man could ever be.
And according to the poet’s recollections of childhood, no child could ever be.

The babe’s peace hinges on fulfilled needs. There is no real freedom there.
What then, is freedom’s identifying mark?

Beyond the monotony of routine and the prison of dim surroundings.
Even nature, a healing teacher, becomes dull as a constant companion.

Where is the spark?
The small speck of rightness surrounded by all that is cheap and temporary?


I am appalled and humbled frequently at the recognition of my own ignorance, spending years confident that my understanding of a particular aspect of the world is sound. And then, in a single discussion with a friend or in a few sentences from a book I realize what had always seemed accurate no longer works. How can this be? How can I know less after years of life and study? Must I resign myself to the apparent fact that I perceive and intuit details, yet am simply unable to correctly interpret or synthesize them?

Coleridge speaks to his sleeping child, and to me. Though his stanza tends toward a pantheistic view of God, the words are memorable:

“He shall mould thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.”


I may not have all the answers or even the right questions. It does not matter how often I encounter thoughts or ideas clearer than my own. But what is imperative is the desire to wonder, to explore, and reason.

“He shall mould [my] spirit.”
“And by giving make it ask.”

This is a gifted mark of freedom.

And from a master . . .

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

from “Frost at Midnight”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

You can read the entire poem here: The Poetry Foundation