The ground is cold beneath my hand
and gleams beneath a thick shellac
no bead of sweat could pierce.

And as I sit, my thoughts begin
to wonder if my blood would stain
the floor or wash away.

Some migrant maid, unseen for now,
perhaps would bring her bucket down
to wipe away the grime.

My wrist would slit, the church would clear,
my kids would not be welcome here,
but no stain would remain.

Super Lawyer Natalie Gregg

It’s official… my wife Natalie Gregg was chosen as one of the top 5% of practicing attorneys in the state of Texas!

Texas Monthly just included Natalie as one of their “Rising Stars” in area of family law. Check it out here:

http://www.superlawyers.com/texas/lawyer/Natalie-Gregg/b6dcb7e3-068d-474f-ab33-c8b0e0777fb7.html

“The Law Office of Natalie Gregg is exclusively focused on the practice of family law, and our mission is to provide North Texas families with the support, guidance and advocacy that they need to overcome the complex emotional and financial issues associated with family law.

Natalie Gregg has dedicated her career to the practice of family law. She is an experienced litigator who combines a great sense of compassion with a dedication to delivering results for her clients. Her collaborative approach also saves clients a significant amount time and money while producing superior results for their entire family — especially for the children.”

While I hope that you will never need my wife’s services, please contact her at 469-519-1026 if you or anyone that you know needs:

• Divorce
• Post-divorce modification
• Child Custody
• Child Support (including renegotiation/modification of current child support)
• Mediation
• Other family law matters

To learn more about The Law Office of Natalie Gregg, please visit http://nataliegregg.com. The sites also includes a host of free legal resources on family law matters.

You can also follow Natalie on Twitter at https://twitter.com/greggnatalie

away

to see it smash
within the sunshine.

The nonprofit sector employs around 10 million people.

The sector engages another 90 million people as volunteers.

Collectively, the sector controls about 10% of the GDP. In Texas, the nonprofit sector employs more people than the oil industry.

And yet  – none of the politicians asking for our vote have ANY plan for how to engage us, our creativity, our passion, our entrepreneurial spirit . . .

Not YET, at least.

Watch this video from CForward. Then join me in donating to support their work.

Love fills the space between our souls and keeps our hearts from longing;
Love pours across the garden and our blossoms never fade.

Love welcomes us beneath her roof and warms us by her fire;
Love enwraps our naked babes and keeps them safe and warm.

Love salves our wounds with words whose truth drives out all pain and sorrow;
Love erupts in prison walls and frees those locked inside.

Love is the light that drives away the shadows from our blindness –
Love is the song that cracks the stone around our earless hearts –
Love is the scent that wakes us from the slumber of our dullness –
Love is the salt that saves our lives, whose savor is our savior –

Love wraps its wings around us;
Love fills our every pore.

Love has given us nine years: may love bring ninety more!

———————
Happy anniversary, Natalie. I love you deeply, dearly, without end.

J.R.R. Tolkien

“Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

———–
RELATED: Hayden’s longer piece, “Middle Passage,” is read aloud by the author here (link includes text of poem)

Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell

Nautilus Island’s hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son’s a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village,
she’s in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria’s century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season’s ill–
we’ve lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall,
his fishnet’s filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler’s bench and awl,
there is no money in his work,
he’d rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill’s skull,
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind’s not right.

A car radio bleats,
‘Love, O careless Love . . . .’ I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat . . . .
I myself am hell,
nobody’s here–

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes’ red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air–
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

The Cleveland Correctional Facility

You are in prison.

Bars block your hands as they reach for freedom.

The air is your arteries — constricted — thumping — heated by the fire of life fighting an undeniable death.

Your dreams slumber beneath the terror of now.

Your thoughts turn not to those you love, nor to those you hate, nor even to yourself — but to the unseeable abyss that lies before you.

Indefinite.

Inescapable.

There.

Your sweat itself is scared and sad and scurrying –
your tongue, too swollen to sing, throbs in your mouth like a dying bird –
your eyes begin to glaze with tears –
your fingers stretch for keys they’ve never seen, but know are there;

you know they’re there.

God almighty – Christ almighty – we know you’re there.