Nice review of my work here: http://outlawpoetry.com/2009/11/11/todd-moore-the-gold-cane-van-goghs-ear-and-the-gun-in-the-casket-wandering-down-this-crooked-road/

And okay to all that.

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Okay,
Father Luke

Every year at Christmas time I open my heart to the endless possibilities of human kindness, and the benevolence of the universe. I’m also a baseball fan, and the San Francisco Giants are my heroes. Fortunately Oregon doesn’t have a Major League Baseball team, so I can retain my cherished Giants roots.

In both cases, baseball heroes, and the benevolence of the universe, and the endless possibilities of human kindness every year at Christmas time, I am predictably disappointed.

I try. Really. I cast aside resentments. I wipe the slate clean, and I shake the dust out of every rug I’ve walked on in the previous year, and I wait for the goodness that is scheduled to arrive. Predictably I am disappointed.

I don’t hate Christmas, and the Holiday Celebrations this time of year anymore than I hate the San Francisco Giants. The truth is that I love the Giants. Every year the Giants will lose in some new way; they will fail to win the Championship in some fresh, and unpredictable manor. I love the Giants. With all my heart.

I love Christmas the same way.

http://fatherluke.com/holiday-wishes

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Okay,
Father Luke

A sense of home. I’ve felt it on occasion. It usually has come as a surprise, and it completes me. I felt it for years in Santa Cruz, as I wrote small poems, and fragments of thought which would later make me a darling of the small press. Those fragments of thought, and poems, by the way? They were merely thoughts I set down before going to sleep after a too long day. We all do that, right?

I felt it this morning, that sense of home, as I lay in bed waiting for the children to wake up as Jenifer was taking the older boys to school.

I have come from a place over 18 hours away to be with a woman who loves me, and whom I love dearly. She has four children, all of whom are fine, and creative children with endearing qualities, and each with charms all their own.

We both work, and we both have hopes and dreams for the future.

It really doesn’t get much better than this.

And so, I am at home here. I am fifty years old. This shall be among the last times I get to know home. And I am very glad.

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Okay,
Father Luke