What Crosses My Mind

  • This Thing We Call Love

    I remember a long time ago, I wrote a little piece about John Lennon, the day he was killed and the newspaper printed it. I was 20 at the time, and it was simple, ‘Guns don’t kill people, people do’ and I couldn’t really take credit for something the world was repeating to itself over…

  • Friends Will Reach

    I have had a few tough days. It is funny how quickly I can sometimes fall into what my mother would often call a low when her diabetes was out of balance. My lows aren’t the result of diabetes, not by any stretch. But I do have them, and I sometimes wish they didn’t exist…

  • Finding Streams

    Go home and write a page tonight Let that page come out of you – then it will be true                      -Langston Hughes I ask them all to do it, my students wide eyed or sleepy take these words and let them become yours, tell us…

  • The Mechanics of Time

    A manner of words will carry weight for the listener far more likely than that speaker for whom the end never arrives.   There is a wisdom in the quiet – when will we ever understand difficulty is far beyond a matter of chosen explanation.   Might we sacrifice peace of mind too often rather…

  • Misplace Design

    We believe we are, a contemporary to what once seemed a regularity, yet we cannot seem to get past the truth.   Do you, we, can everyone feel it in the moment, when we least desire to be noticed, that fear returns, always knocking on our door.   This thing about love, when least expected,…

  • Silence is a Forest

    Listen to the birds singing in springHear the cello at home in between Each memoryEach moment A song we could create in melodyIf only the world not live parodySuch is the mendacity of our timeWhen still is beauty yet sublime Each momentEach memory If in the midst of a traveled rhymeWe shut out a neighbor…

  • Stepping Away

    Many times in my life, have I stepped away, taken a breather, had my hand forced … yet, when does the time come when we can honestly say, the choice is my own for me to decide in some sort of even way, not a hostile arrangement, by any means, so out of character, would…

  • A Gradual Change

    We do not see it cannot predict though exist it will. A quiet change when silence has bearing on life, and we do tear, or choose we may hold broad smile in our day. ©️ Thom Amundsen 2019

  • Pieces of Me

    Wish I could find smallish memory wrap them in twine drop them in the sea Then might my eyes witness some effort now questioning why an absorbent support Will their history rather sink than float farewell this century shadowed life he wrote Above water may I not abhor Pain left living on the ocean floor

  • Once, In Sunlight

    We did in quiet observation, attend of course the eyes windows that speak well beyond the notice of a fashion, of a trend, of an expectation.   Instead, just a glance where both pain and joy can reside, can wait for the next opportunity to speak aloud in the framework of sweet silence.   We…