It was a pretty day here in our small town. Sunny and warm. I had coffee with a buddy downtown, and we talked about writing and stuff. You want to see a vignette I wrote last night? You can check it out here. All rights are reserved on that puppy.

My Dad called from Texas, and my brother called from Northern California, to wish me a happy birthday. Mom made us a nice dinner.

Dad said he baited his hook and cast his line off my uncle’s party barge, out on the lake. Leaned the pole up against the inside of the boat. Then he turned to talk to my uncle and some fool fish jerked the whole rig – rod and reel – into the water, never to be seen again. Which explains why he called me from the parking lot of Wal-Mart. How ’bout that, huh? Talk about biting off more than you can chew.

Things are blooming nicely. Here’s a yellow rose from the parental back yard.

click to enlarge

Speaking of blooming, I’m enjoying writing the short fiction pieces – vignettes – that you can find on my Web site. (There’s a link under the gull in the sidebar; click Creative.) They seem to be a natural evolution of the poetry I’ve been writing for the past 25 years. [Holy crap.]

I was thinking this afternoon about how my writing has changed in that time. I no longer feel a need to impress you with obscurity, to pepper my work with allusions to TS Eliot, Dante, and the Grateful Dead. I’m looking for real people, just to catch a glimpse of them; just a snapshot of the human heart. Maybe a tenuous tug on the mysticism of sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck. Or at your kitchen table, when you suddenly realize you hold the coffee mug just like your grandfather did.

Anyhoo, here’s to me. God grant me many summers.