First Known When Lost

Irony rules the modern world, together with its noisome colleagues: cynicism, sarcasm, solipsism, and narcissism.  Of course, I recognize th...

Most of the pre-modern Chinese poets were civil servants.  Thus, their lives are generally similar in outline.  First came the rigorous civi...

The approach of winter has got me to thinking about the small things I will miss until spring returns.  The sudden whirr-vibration of a humm...

I cannot claim to have gained any wisdom during my time on earth.  The most I have done is to recognize (vaguely) the truth of certain truis...

In this part of the world, autumn has thus far been benign, wistful and benign.  The winds have rattled the casements now and then.  And for...

This year, as autumn has turned, two phrases have been recurring to me. First:  "Slow, slow!"  (From Robert Frost's " Oct...

On several occasions in his poetry and prose Edward Thomas describes enigmatic meetings with strangers encountered during his walks through ...

There is a plainspoken serenity to traditional Chinese lyrical poetry that provides a beautiful counterpoint to the ofttimes declamatory and...

Back in August , I mentioned a row of maple trees that I pass beside in my walks through a marina.  At that time, the trees provided one of ...

One of my afternoon walks takes me through a former army post (now a park) that is located on the bluffs beside Puget Sound.  During the Sec...