November

The drive up the mountain this morning brought a smile to my soul as the sun’s rays danced through the trees and a canopy of autumn colors filled my senses with every thrust of exuberant orange, red, and yellow. This multi-colored coat embraced me around every curve, returned to me her eager expression. Rolling up the mountain was an Eden’s delight.

Perhaps this all began with Cain and Abel, this us and them prism by which we live and think and see and do. Folks in Four Holes aren’t any different. Down here in Four Holes, where my friend Mary says we’re just a screen door from hell, where the heat and humidity can make a man known and prominent by the way he sweats and will drive him to drink iced tea by the gallon, Fern Campbell had what is referred to in Four Holes as an “insah-dent.”

Winter crept in this year, silent and dry. Sitting at the keyboard, one might dispute the observation. As I write, raindrops are playing...

On the southern side of Manchester Road, along a brief sliver of Route 66, in the St. Louis bedroom community of Maplewood, Missouri, a...

Wading through some grief over the loss of someone who anchored me at times, sensing the strangeness one feels when sudden loss is fresh...

Not sure when I first noticed that I was different, or turning this thought around, that all those other people were different than me....

Granting glimmers between reflection and longing, joy lays hold of you by what you know you will lose, with reflections of the...

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, Or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, But because it never forgot...

Chasing trophies in my youth, chasing validation, a pattern laid a groove in my psyche. My first trophy meant only there would be a...

I didn’t notice when it happened. Somehow I found myself feeling nostalgic about Rod Stewart. A sudden compulsion to go to Wal-Greens and...

You’ve been taken by the wind You have known the kiss of sorrow Doors that would not take you in Outcast and a stranger. Lyrics from “By...

The two men’s eyes met. They shook hands and spoke. “Hey, Dave Gresham.” “Tony, suh, my name is Tony.” “How are you, Tony?” “Oh, I’m...

To struggle used to be to grab with both hands and shake and twist and turn and push and shove and not give in but wrest an answer from...

Turning the corner, I steered the car into the parking lot. There, confronting me, the sign said, “Sudden Service.” I thought, “Wow! Not...

There I sat, thoughtless, blank, depleted of any idea for this column. It wasn’t so much writer’s block but more that the bathtub I call...

Tollierville was a particular type of town, populated with a particular type of people. Each lived in a particular type of house...

I have come to accept the varied interpretations of Biblical reading, even when different and of apparent contradiction and not of my...

Some years ago when I dedicated myself to a life of daily prayer and devotion, after a time, I became quite discouraged. This may seem an...

There are those who say it is time for God to come and right the wrongs and sufferings of this world. The thought goes like this: God is...

He broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the year of Covid, I miss those four walls...