For Asa with a good flame — Waiting for a train on a wood plank platform high above Sedgwick Street, another train passes going the opposite way. At the back of very last car, standing outside of the closed caboose door, is a man. He doesn’t look authorized to be there. In fact, he looks a little…

When what might save the world is the last thing we want to try — Flight A song’s been ringing in my ear while I’ve been writing you this letter. It has taken a while. To write it, I mean. Six months, maybe seven. I’ve gone slow because I want to get it right, because there’s something in it that I really want to give you…

Before I check the election returns, my ear keens to the way my neighbor closes her hallway door. It tunes in like a radio dial to a man clearing his throat on the sidewalk below… to how a garbage truck accelerates in the alley… how much pressure on the pedal…

Real Remedies for Revolutionary Times — There’s a poem of a book called The Other Way to Listen by my favorite author, Byrd Baylor. It sits on my shelf in the parable/teaching story/wisdom-for-every-age section, squished in next to Till We Have Faces, The Prophet, Tracy’s Tiger, and Daughters of Copper Woman. I’m thinking of it because…

We often wait for an emergency to justify taking care of life — and it’s a pattern we can’t afford to keep repeating — I was on the Chicago Red Line train that derailed in 2013. It slowed to a stop when two rear cars jumped the rails, their heavy steel wheels splintering through the wooden tracks, three stories above the ground. I remember the height, because news crews shimmied up nearby fire escapes…

Usually I am serious about the morning. The necessity of routine requires all my attention. If I’m doing it right, my morning routine requires getting a good 8–9 hours of sleep prior… but that’s up to the me of yesterday. However disciplined she was or wasn’t, the morning part involves…

Listen up because I know the code. Get on your bike without shoes, and ride as fast as you can on a summer night, north, under big dark trees. Wear a baseball cap even though the sun is gone. Listen to some rock and roll. Like, Automatic or Sixes and…