Paul Christensen: The Bluest Sky
He knew the rotting nature of poverty and the dull, disintegrating poison of lost hope. He had some of the dark anger of Walt Whitman, who could charm a winter tree back into bloom with his dreams and turn on his heels and find despair tearing at the entrails of the ordinary man.
Paul Christensen: The Muse of Memory
Nothing stirs but the wind that rattles rain gutters and pulls on the hinges of blistered shutters. A pair of boots has been left out on a patio of gray flagstones, the mud still clinging to their heels like forgotten promises.
Paul Christensen: The Old Year in my Hand
I am beginning to believe democracy survived a profound crisis, and is about to show that a flimsy idea proved itself as durable as the trunk of an ancient maple tree.
Paul Christensen: The Testament of Winter
The wind last night was fierce and numbingly cold. It moved like a carving knife through the remaining remnants of summer, easing away the reluctant last memories we have of the warm and sunny past.
Paul Christensen: Election Terrors
No one seems to know what to think or how to feel right now. The stress is building and the threats to this election are so poisonous, it makes you quiver with fear.
Paul Christensen: The October Twilight
Leaf by leaf, the sky unfolds its ancient sunlight and lets the fragments of history drift to the ground, one broken fact at a time. How difficult it is to gather up the ruins of time and try to make sense of what we are — the foreground we emerged from, the burden of our legacy as inheritors of shame and guilt.
Paul Christensen: Three Cheers for Autumn
I woke up this morning to a chill in the air. I closed the bedroom windows and shivered into my clothes, then hurried down to the kitchen to consult the … Continue reading
Paul Christensen: The Grinding Gears of Time
Trump’s house of cards is built on ruses and Iago-like deceptions, a palace of flimsy lies waiting for the door to fly open and a gust of honest wind to sweep them all away.
Paul Christensen: A Comforting Breeze
I am hopeful again, a man who has awakened from a long dream to find that heaven has opened its granary at last and spilled this nourishment down upon each of us, all of us.
Paul Christensen: On Silence
I am possessed of a brooding spirit, some ominous angel who has landed on my shoulders, staring at my ear. It wants to know why I do not understand silence, the poetry of space.
Paul Christensen: The Reluctant Summer
I could feel the rage building as I saw the nation writhe, then uncoil its wrath and take to the streets. I was demoralized to realize that my whole life had been lived in the twisted emotions of a country poisoned to its soul with racist hatred.
Paul Christensen: The Book of Eternity
The dark has stairs and doors that have never been opened. Who knows where they lead, or what impenetrable paradoxes await the person who turns a knob and presses against the infinite ignorance we cower from?
Paul Christensen: Timbrels in the Marsh
The sky is a stoic blue, hard as a marble, with little wimpy clouds that carry nothing more than a few regrets from a dying winter. We’re here, right on the precipice of a season.
Paul Christensen: When the Ice Won’t Melt
It’s one of those diamond-bright days of early winter, with the ground ringing like iron when you walk on it.
