Brian Doyle
So much Twain
Together, the three volumes are five inches tall and weigh more than my children did when they emerged from the sea of their mother.
Gentle touches
Spent all day and deep into the evening Saturday at a wedding, studying the ways and means and manners by which people gently touch each other, and so communicate this and that and the other thing.
Ash Wednesday
Here’s your Ash Wednesday story.
A mother carries her tiny daughter
With her as she gets ashed and the
Girl, curious and wriggly, squirms
...
A bride with brass
Today’s remarkable vision: a woman in her bridal dress
Walking purposefully along the street. This was enough
Of an amazing sight by itself, but the determined stride,...
The song sparrow
Walked out to the car this morning to find a small brown
Bird deceased on the windshield. A young song sparrow,
Neither naked gawky nestling nor chesty feathered elder;...
Brian Doyle's Christmas picks
Novels that rattled and moved me in the last year or so include Anthony Doerr’s terrific World War II novel All the Light We Cannot See (Scribner)....
Were you lonely when you were a freshman?
There I am in the bottom bunk of my small room in the old hall, with my roommate snoring above me, the roommate I hardly saw and hardly knew.
Once in a while we should say what is
I was pawing through a shelf of books the other day
When out fell a note from my late brother in his tiny
Adamant wry inarguable crisp half-cursive-half-not ...
Tell me tell me tell me
I board the airplane to see my parents. They live far away and long ago
And some years into the future; you never met such wry time machines...
Some sort of a prayer
I gave a rambling talk recently and a long line of teenagers came
Up to speak to me afterward and it was instantly clear that every...
On Laurel Street
A hundred times I warned my kids about that stretch of road. A dozen times I inquired about streetlights, or reflectors, or anything in that tunnel.
The most beautiful boat
My brother is nine and I am ten. Wood already obeys his hands when he asks it gently to work with him.
What it is you would like the stone to say
Called the cemetery this morning to begin to plot
What happens to my mom and dad after they die.
Yes, I just wrote plot. My parents would smile at...
Two uncles
I would sit between them, and every hour or so one would murmur a response to some moppet's question, and the other would smile at his garrulity.
Glimpse of the holy: Notes on three spiritual writers
A pet peeve of mine is the pigeonholing of authors—especially the label "nature writers" inflicted on certain writers of immense spiritual power.
The room in the firehouse
I went to a meeting with a friend yesterday. Many of the speakers were wry and funny, but their stories were awful.
What do poems do?
I was, no kidding, a visiting writer in a kindergarten recently,
And the children asked me many wry and hilarious questions,
...