When I left my home in Fearrington Village, NC to attend my nephew's Duke Physician Associate graduation ceremony not long ago, the woods were whirring with the sound of Brood XIX of the 13-year cicadas, an entomological phenomenon indigenous to our area. They made a surrealistic and inorganic sound; like a spaceship - a whirring, sometimes rising to a roaring, whirring din. Earlier during my morning run, I'd crunched many dead that had fallen out of the trees onto the road.

I At church we have this Christmas tradition of providing gifts for the Children’s Home. Paper ornaments, on each a name is written,...

Education for John Milton had a lofty, dual objective--a public objective: To "fit a man to perform justly, skillfully and...

An ekphrastic poem inspired by the Conrad Shawcross piece “Schisms” from his exhibition “Cascading Principles” at Oxford University,...