My father's interrogative, "What, not pau yet? How come?" was always followed by my mother's declarative, "No, not pau yet." followed by my unvoiced imperative, "Do it yourself, den!" My reflection of these moments, of a man who did nothing around the house, is accompanied by ripples of pity for his pools of impatience, driven…

He is here to visit his dying grandmother. She lives in an apartment building a few blocks away from where we live, and where he spent his childhood, walking to and from school or his part-time job, scooping ice cream. Early in the morning while on our daily walk in the hush, we go past…

And we are paying, the Dow falling precipitously in the shale of greed. Now I have portion control. My husband grows skinnier. I divvey up the stone potatoes, stone carrots. I go around to turn off unnecessary lights. We eat in, take home-lunch to work, five minute showers, search for black currents and unplug computers….

After the fire, an act of devotion. Thousands of women cut their hair for the thigh-thick braids of hair ropes that lifted the heavy spruce beams taken from medieval loam. Ordinary ropes would not have been able to lift and have these beams loom over worshippers in the Grand Amida Hall after the rebuilding of…

we ponder. Pull them out, as from a magician's hat. Small at first, the questions– like the easy trick of making a quarter appear from the petal of a child's ear that makes him smile and run to his mother and say, "Look what I've got!" Of spouting a life line of blood-red scarves from…

are your companions in life– your memories— that can spring out of nowhere. Take you to a childhood afternoon or light a mountain trail you once walked– the same light attenuated by bamboo, swaying in the wind’s coming– where a fall off the precipice meant no returning to the porch shaded by the jacaranda. Or,…

Isn’t rounder or stronger. Not a face to be afraid of in its song. It is kinder, more gentle, glow-softened by petticoat-white lights, ruffled as oncidium orchids. . . . stares out in longing for a simple kiss, the precision of nesting tables, the pin-wheel whites, along the walkway that brushed her skirts as she…

of what lay beneath the glassy surface of the sea before you, made you want to dive deep into its dark-blue secrets and trapped air. You have finally reached bottom. Now, you are heading up, as if in an unwinding of your life’s journey. So your dying comes as no surprise, except to those who…