Fade to Quiet

--for the children murdered by their ill-medicated mother on August 27, 2011 The city will remember your smiles, beloveds, and carry them in its heart. The shapes of your small hands will always be beloved, grasping at the world you were just coming to know by heart. The city will invite you over to play, beloveds, when the mountains are changing as they are always changing our hearts. The city will sit on the edge of your bed, beloveds, read you your favorite story until it knows it by heart. And the city will peek in on you at night, beloved, and watch the rising blankets as you breathe and listen to the beating of your heart. Though we now let you go to be with the spirit, beloveds, we will keep you here in our spirit in our hearts. We will watch you grow, beloveds. We will remember you when our hearts delight in play. Our children will remember the name of your most beloved fruit. They will know how high you could swing on the playground with a racing heart. T...

In 1940s movie consciousness, a honeymoon in Niagara Falls was that iconic holiday. The dream destination for beginning a life together, Niagara is the site of a millenia-old geological event. At the end of the last ice age, the newly formed Great Lakes crashed through the escarpment, forging a path to the Atlantic Ocean. Despite its being one of natural wonders of the world, Niagara Falls was commonplace in my childhood. My grandparents lived fifteen minutes away along the Parkway in a Georgian house on the river. We picnicked just above the Falls where a ruined ship rusts away in the current over the decades. "This is my favorite part of the river," my grandmother would say, "just before the Falls." I grew up with one of the greatest natural phenomena just down the road.      When my daughter was three weeks old, I flew to Canada to introduce her to my 93 year old grandmother. We stayed in a Victorian Bed and Breakfast where my grandmother had played with her fr...