River Muse

Love

A friend writes, “Humans have penetrated almost every corner of the planet, figured out how to fly, built skyscrapers and submarines, artificial hearts and yet, emotions still baffle us, …

The grandchild

Everyone says there is nothing like it. But you don’t know until you know. “What’s it like?” a writer friend asks after a session at the literary festival in Narrowsburg …

At seven-one

If you had asked me, when I was seven years old, what my life would be when I was 71, I might have said something like this: “I will live in a house near the water, maybe a river or the sea, …

I’m running

As if being a new grandmother weren’t compelling enough, I have taken on a new occupation. I’m running for office as a member of the Tusten Town Board. It wasn’t my idea, …

A morbid fascination

I am reluctant to admit my fascination with the murder trial going on in South Carolina. I listen on my earbuds, connected to YouTube on my phone while walking along the river flats. It is a …

The riptide

As a child, my one consuming fear was a tsunami. I don’t know when I first heard of the huge tidal wave that could decimate an entire island, but it still has the same effect on me when I think of it. My chest draws in and my breath gets short. I can see it make a tide pool of the beach, disappearing the waves until an unimaginably huge wave starts rising up from a half-mile out to sea and grows larger, as large as a 10-story building, until it crashes over me and everything.