I had a dream last night that several years had passed, and Khalil and Fatima, my host family brother and mother, were coming to the United States to visit me. I was at the Nashville airport waiting for them to arrive, and when I saw them, they were jumping up and down yelling excitedly, “Salamu […]
Maroc Arrival
Well, it’s finally here, and that sixty or so hours of traveling (from Nashville to Philly to JFK to Casablanca to Mehdya, where I am currently) just completely took it out of me. I’ll keep this first post short, as I mostly just wanted you to know that I made it okay. I’ll have a […]
For the Good of a Slightly Controversial Topic.
I’m fourteen days or so away from moving to Morocco as a Peace Corps Trainee, a country that is around 98% Islamic. While there, I will be learning Moroccan Arabic and immersed into a community of people undoubtedly devoted to their faith. My responsibility to love and to serve this community includes the obligation to respect their […]
A Legacy of Service, or Why Morocco Mattered to Me Before This
Morocco was, strangely, my first choice, among Peace Corps countries I could serve. I say “strangely” because as I dreamed about Pacific Islands or Guatemalan potholes to hell (my dear friend Maria really wanted me to go to Guatemala), Morocco was never a serious consideration. I mean, I certainly mentioned it in one of my […]
Nashville VIII
no tears for Nashville, no sense in adding to the flood, though the roads that ran like rivers had us wading in the mud, and even when the Opry House took the floodgates in, or even when the Titan gods were crying ‘sink or swim,’ we knew that ‘we are Nashville,’ the Athens of this […]
Sunset
the Sunset found me in your field, and I bent the blades of grass against your back like pillows that could’ve been swords instead, though the only blood drawn gave life, a test of love and sacrifice, but as we bathed in all this bliss, the Sunset burned upon us, this: that time cannot be […]
Rood Again
old tree, the way you sway with the wind, you test your roots and make known your age, but we do not hear the grinds or groans of decay – no, these sounds you sigh are those of aching beauty, of cruciform desire, a path laid out beyond the time when leaves no longer dawn […]
Trees
I like your trees, I like the roots I don’t always see there below you and me, and I like the rusty bark you might wish was smooth. I like hanging in your canopy way up in your leaf-like roof. I like the little breeze, the way it blows your hair to here or there. […]
A Grand Canyon
the old rusted rocks, cold and covered in snow-splatters across that precipice, bring forth the evergreen not as likely seen on summer days, and as the sun can’t sink to shove off shadow, the old Colorado teases us to think she plays dead, but instead, she lies alive and in search of even one grain […]
Nashville VII
Gotham sits quiet, as the bridge-and-tunnel clan trudges home, while Batman reads his poetry on a channel all his own, and no one’s watching, no one’s watching, as the streets receive their shine, as the trash along the Cumberland will tarry with the crime. the searchlight wavers to-and-fro, the hero will not come, our hope […]
