Oak Island, NC

Eight (was it nine?) hours, multiple traffic jams and pit stops later we pull up to our cottages on Oak Island, NC. Four the past 3 years we’ve been visiting the Outer Banks – and we love the place, but not the traffic. What was once a retreat is now a clogged, vinyl

Tidepools are for splashing. 

Hallelujah!

Two tired, traveling road poets, one nursing mom of three little ones under 5 (tired by definition), three little ones under 5, one teacher out of school for a whole day (more tiredness), two more little ones under 4, one salesman, one secret service agent, two teenagers (one in love) excused from school early,

Buffy the Beetle Slayer

Living in the house we have Hector, the rat terrier who would roll over in submission for a butterfly, Spike the cat who is all white, deaf and clueless, a lizard who (I have heard) eats crickets raw (some things do not have to be seen to be believed) and Buffy, the fluffy gray and

a poet on the edge

Saudi poet and novelist Ali al-Dimeeni, who has already been in jail fora year, was sentenced on May 15 to nine years in prison for sowingdissent, disobeying his rulers and sedition. He had written a letter tothe kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, calling forpolitical, economic and social reforms – including parliamentary elections.http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-saudi-bard-behind-bars,0,1534164,print.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
One

Brian is in the Secret Service, part of the Presidential Detail Emergency Response Team 

Brian

I have told many students and teachers about my son-in-law Brian and how he has to write as part of his job. Often kids (teachers too) dismiss poetry writing as superfulous, and I always remind them of Brian and others who never thought they would grow up to be writers, but then find themselves

Rolling Thunder

Once a year outlaws gather in the capital — black leather on harleys, V8s on two wheels roaring down Constitution Avenue to commemorate those whose lives were changed, ended (stolen?) by the Vietnam War. This year there were a reported 300,000 bikes, thunderous to say the least. Some of these bikers carry more

Max and me at the Vietnam War memorial wall. 

Listen to the Mocking Bird

“Listen to the Mockingbird” is a song I remember singing in grade school forty years ago growing up in Michigan, not a mockingbird travel destination. Arriving at Kelly’s outside of Leesburg, VA on Friday night around 11:30 PM, I heard mockingbirds for the first time. They are loud – singing their brains out