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I Checked All the Boxes

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6/28/2026 56th San Francisco Pride Ken Ireland I love a parade. I love a marching band. I particularly love the village bandstand with friends singing and dancing. I love inviting people who are hungry for love and affection into the circle. I love seeing people being exuberant. Anyone, Everyone. I love the chance to sing off-key without critics circling. I love being supported and loved for who I am Without pretending to be someone who ain’t me. I love a chance to feel free enough to express a few things hidden that need to be said. I don’t mind if a few friends get a bit out there and sloppy. The ring of tolerance has expanded a bit. I still feel safe. I know I can trust you. I know that there will be more than a few apologies tomorrow. I’ve been there. I am open enough to let a few things slide. No grudges. No recriminations. I checked all the boxes, but something still feels off. Last year, I had trouble paying the bill. This year, to help and even expand a bit, I said yes when you...
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Originally

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Carol Ann Duffy We came from our own country in a red room which fell through the fields, our mother singing our father’s name to the turn of the wheels. My brothers cried, one of them bawling, Home, Home, as the miles rushed back to the city, the street, the house, the vacant rooms where we didn’t live any more. I stared at the eyes of a blind toy, holding its paw. All childhood is an emigration. Some are slow, leaving you standing, resigned, up an avenue where no one you know stays. Others are sudden. Your accent wrong. Corners, which seem familiar, leading to unimagined pebble-dashed estates, big boys eating worms and shouting words you don’t understand. My parents’ anxiety stirred like a loose tooth in my head. I want our own country, I said. But then you forget, or don’t recall, or change, and, seeing your brother swallow a slug, feel only a skelf of shame. I remember my tongue shedding its skin like a snake, my voice in the classroom sounding just like the rest. Do I only think I...
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On Being Mauled by a Bear

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Last winter The bears came down Below the snow line. They were hungry. Word got out that they were four, A she-bear with cubs. What went through these women’s minds when the bear lunged at their face. They also had a right to go about their business. I wonder. Astonished. I ask myself if I would be brave. One who lived is a friend of my cook’s wife. She was up at the well early To pump water for the day. She claimed to have put up a fight. The village was proud. The strong survival reflex of these mountains. The Tibetan woman on the kora was not so lucky. The Dalai Lama should have sent a representative to her cremation. Her holy work was his. The bears are back up in the mountains where they should be Now we just contend with rain and flooding. Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep  forth. The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth, they gather themselves together, and lay them down in their d...
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Memorial

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I was sitting in the room with Phil Whalen When he got that call from Allen. It was the room where I had served Them tea and cookies many times While they told stories, joked and laughed. It was at about the same time that Allen usually dropped in On his old friend, Just before Zazen, The time for everything and nothing. Sometimes, a memory would Float to the surface and they’d Go on and on, words and memories Bouncing off one another Sometimes sad, more often bright Then no words. But always love. “I’m so sorry,” said Phil’ “Thank you for calling,” His voice trailing off. He put down the phone, His voice soft and shaken. “Allen’s dying,” he said. “I’m so sorry." Then he cried. I’d never seen him cry before.
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A Purification

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by Wendell Berry At start of spring I open a trench In the ground. I put into it The winter’s accumulation of paper, Pages I do not want to read Again, useless words, fragments, errors. And I put into it the contents of the outhouse: light of the suns, growth of the ground, Finished with one of their journeys. To the sky, to the wind, then, and to the faithful trees, I confess my sins: that I have not been happy enough, considering my good luck; have listened to too much noise, have been inattentive to wonders, have lusted after praise. And then upon the gathered refuse, of mind and body, I close the trench folding shut again the dark, the deathless earth. Beneath that seal the old escapes into the new. Wendell Berry, New Collected Poems
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PERFECT STILLNESS

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Peter Matthiessen, 1927-2014 You whose written words ushered so many Into the theater of meditation While all the while as restless as a leopard Confined to a soiled cage of his own making, Who sought connection but evinced a cruel Detachment from his wives, his family, What have you left for those of us who still Believe in prose, regardless of its author? Perhaps it’s nothing less than an open mind Teeming with unsummoned memories Of Himalayan vistas, the Serengeti, Greenland, Florida, a distant father. Little wonder that the title Roshi, However earned, rested uneasily On you, even as you sat in perfect stillness. By Ben Howard
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A Love Letter to Minnesota

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If they gun me down in my own street someday may my crime be compassion. May the record show  from every angle  that I was helping a woman up  after they pushed her to the ground, that not even their weapons  could stop me from extending  my hand to those in need.  that I was a walking example  of the best my elders taught me --   that everyone is equal  and worthy of defending. If they tell the nation,  from the highest podium,  that I was a domestic terrorist,  let it be known that my radical act  was believing the best in people  when they wanted nothing more  than to divide us. By Michael F Dubois 
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