Incarnation
So I’m waiting for the un-nameable certainty, Trusting in all the stuff I can touch I can control… So much stuff. Even a thread of…
Night Light – 2019
I have got to stop drinking coffee with dinner! It’s 1:30 in the morning and I feel like I could power the Christmas train all…
Sleigh Rides – 2002
Greetings from the Burk Motel! Yes, we are many stockings hanging by the fire this year! We have a house hopping with teenagers and toddlers,…
A Day in the Life – 2003
The Year 2003 – As seen through a “typical day” at the Burk Motel 5:40 a.m. Up and at ’em. Someone has either (1) wet…
Creatures Stirring – 2004
They must just smell me booting up the computer. It’s a typical “nap” time at the Burk Motel: Nice lunch… a few stories… trips to…
Treetops and Transitions – 2005
Never a dull moment at the Burk Motel. We find that this year we have strange, premature vacancies, as we return to being the family…
Come to the Cradle – 2006
We put the creches out tonight. In classic Burk fashion, there’s more than one of everything, so we have the moss-covered manger with the Raphael-esque…
A Christmas Poem – 2007
(With obvious apologies to Clement C. Moore) ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and here at the Burks’, any creature not stirring was put right to…
The Speed Woman – 2009
Ahhhh… Snow, glorious snow! We awoke to 12 inches or more of the beautifully, blissful, time-stopping stuff. And by some miracle we still have power,…
Coordinates – 2010
I think these Christmas form letters must be “out.” Or I am. I haven’t gotten any this year. But style never being much of a…
The View from Here – 2011
My sister said, “Too bad he doesn’t have his shirt on, then you could use it for your Christmas photo,” and I thought… Am I…
Merry Chaos? – 2012
I made a point of meeting the bus in an apron yesterday. I’ve never really worn an apron, cooking dinner in haste with my just-came-in…
Hanging On – 2013
As I stood in the wet, overgrown woods behind our vet’s office last Monday, I found myself wishing I’d worn different clothes. The lovely L.L.Bean…
Plugged In – 2014
I don’t know why I told the perky Verizon store guy about the TV. Until two months ago, our TV was your basic 1995 Philips-Magnavox…
Notes from Another Galaxy – 2015
I must need my head examined. Two weeks before Christmas and I’m standing in Pet Smart with Ellie, eyeing a yellow orange fur ball named…
Swimming the 500
It has to be 95° on the Randolph-Macon pool deck, and I am seated in turtleneck and fleece watching Sophie, ninth-grade freestyler for the Hanover…
Christmas on the Inside – 2017
Christmas on the inside. It’s a phrase I’ve used to console Sophie this month about all the broken, on-the-fritz, undone and un-decorative aspects of life…
The Butterfly Jar
Of all the props, puppets, and flannel board pieces that live in the resource closet of the library where I work as children’s storyteller, my…
Selfie
The woods are the way I remember–not like they’ve been waiting 30 years for me to come back, but close. Still and yellow, falling light…
Pick a Card
Earlier this week I am held hostage in my own home. Boy, home “sick” from school, is bored. He can’t have his phone during these…
On Plato and Acorns
In it: all promise lies in life and wait. In it, existence holds in a dark and silent song — the end already contained in…
Full Circle
31 July 2019 Fifty years ago this summer, men walked on the moon. Fifty years ago this month, a category 5 hurricane, one of only…
To Mother Another
The Exchange: a day later There is a good chance–cell phone, video games, social media and modern superficiality being what it is–that I will never…
Anatomy of an Exchange
The Exchange, Day 9 Week One: Love at first sight. He is precious! He is so short! Wow, look at all this stuff he can…
I’m fine and I like my family
The Exchange, Day 17 One of the aspects of “modern” foreign exchange is all the technological trappings that come with it. Child is barely here…
Perfect and Pure
The Exchange: Day 16 William learned to dive backwards the summer our French boy came to town. Camille taught him. I watched them working on…
All Boy
The Exchange, Day 14 Will is at camp. If I were smarter I could pull it off his phone and enjoy it again–or share it:…
Fatigué
The Exchange: Day 19 Toward the end of our time, it’s as though a switch gets flipped. I had forgotten, but the same thing happened…
Heights
The Exchange, Day 17 “So, Camille, is there anything you won’t ride?” Drops, falls, spins and speeding roller coasters–you like the amusement park? “Bah oui!”…
Souvenirs
The Exchange, last day I don’t know what to buy for him or with him to take home to France. Since he touched down, he…
Plugged In
The Exchange: Day 1-21 (an ongoing observation) Age and immaturity aside, we have another obstacle to communication. Perhaps you will have guessed it by now.…
Things I will need translated before he leaves
The Exchange: Day 15 As our time together winds to a close, I realize there are several phrases and pointers I’ve wanted to say to…
Lost in Translation
The Exchange: Day 6 The larger difference, no surprise, is not the language barrier between a boy who does not speak English and a boy…
A Fatted Calf
Day 3: The Joy of (not) Cooking Strange. I’ve been to the grocery store once with Will and once with Camille, and still we have…
To the River
The Exchange: Day 4 You know you’re a Burk when you’ve been in the country not three full days and you are awakened from a…
The International Language of Boy
The Exchange: Day 2 As one would expect, it’s a little awkward when the boys meet. Two teenage boys, in a situation not of their…
Room
The Exchange: Day 1 For some reason at the Burk house, getting an exchange student from another country always involves paint. Two years ago, when…
William’s Day
William’s answer to the age-old question: “So…How was your day at School?” We’re seated at the kitchen table after a long day for both of…
“For This, I was Born …”
“For this, I was born,” Jesus tells us. For this? Today’s Gospel rocks us with its injustice, its inhumanity, its great wrong. For what is…
Window
(Postcards from Cyrene) The Lord came into your history, into the dust of your human being, barefoot and bearing his own cross–all the makings, all…
Water From the Rock
Your thirst was a boundless place And I gave you manna. I sent you food which fed without your knowing (“What is it?” They…
Souvenirs 