Fitz’s Journal | John Fitz

I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives

~Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Mum…

Very jealous today of all the folks I see spending time with their respective moms--and sad for those who can't and for those whose wives were taken from their families too early in life... This is my remmebrance of my "mum" who died several years ago. I ran...

Welcome

I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land... ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden I’ve...

The Small Potato

Maybe there is a God. I just came home and sat down in the kitchen to grade some papers and input some grades, but the internet is buggy and slow, and I thought, "maybe this is the message" that I am trading my soul for work. I even remember myself pontificating in...

Weekend Custody

Jesse calls up this morning—
“You can come downstairs now;
You see the grapefruit bowl?
Well, I fixed it all;
I fixed everything for you.”

Everything’s for you…

“Let me help you make the coffee,
Momma says you drink it too.
I can’t reach the stove,
But I can pour it, though—
What’s it like living alone?”

Goathouse

In reaching for the scythe I’m reminded of the whetstone and the few quick strokes by which it was tested— the hardness of hot August; the burning of ticks off dog backs. It’s winter now in this garage made barn, and the animals seem only curious that I’d be here so...

Diesel Lullaby

I've been spending a lot of time lately writing sketches of songs—some more complete than others. I have found that it takes time for a song to evolve into its final form, so what I have posted here is more the end of the beginning, not the end. Denise gave me the...

A Late Night Metacognition

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after ~Henry David Thoreau When you need something done, find a busy person to help you get it done. My mother loved repeating that to me all the way to her dying day,...

If you don’t stand, you cower…

Maybe it is time to be less forgiving. I have rarely agreed with our president, but I held on to the shreds of truth that shore up his arguments: we can’t welcome every immigrant who makes it to our border; we cannot bow to the audacity of corrupt governments in...

Presenting…

"Anything worth succeeding in, is worth failing in."~by Edison? A contractor friend showed up at my house a few weeks ago just after I finished making the hearth and installing my new wood/coal stove. He complimented me on how "awesome" it looked. I then lamented...

The Teacher’s Couch

It’s not just a couch; it’s a sofa, too ~Fitz I remember my first year teaching at Fenn—and it was really my first stint as a true worker with responsibilities outside of what I already had in my wheelhouse—and on this day, some twenty something years ago, I...

Know Thyself…

Writing a Metacognition Know Thyself… Explore, Assess, Reflect & Rethink If we don’t learn from what we do, we learn little of real value. If we don’t make the time to explore, reflect and rethink our ways of doing things we will never grow, evolve and reach our...

Metamorphoses

Marriage & Magnanimity

If we want to have the freedom to marry whom we want to marry, why is it so important that the state (government) recognise that marriage? Is it simply the expediency of dispensing the entitlements of a marriage certificate: tax benefits, employment benefits, or the...

The Nagging Thing

Not many more nights like this, warm enough to sit outside on the back porch. The kids and Denise long asleep. Usually, during the school year, this is my "time" to catch up on schoolwork--grading, posting the assignments for the week and playing the general catchup...

Concord

The people, the music filledness of rush hour traffic skirting puddles work crews packing in laughswearingmudyellowed slickers lighting candle bombs. My sadness the euphoric detachment. I love this town. It breathes me.

What Christmas Is

I am not sure what Christmas really is anymore. I am almost afraid to think of what Christians are going through in the lands of the original Christian faith. By dint of place and time, I grew up in the Catholic faith, and try as I might, I can’t ever escape the...

Ghetto of Your Eye

A Veteran's Day Remembrance I wrote this song back in the winter of 1989 in the dining car of a steam driven train, somewhere along the Trans-Siberian railway, after meeting a group of Russian soldiers fresh from battle in Afghanistan—that poor country that has been a...

Thanksgiving

I am surprised sometimesby the suddenness of November:beauty abruptly shedto a common nakedness--grasses deadenedby hoarfrost,persistent memoriesof people I’ve lost.It is left to those of us dressed in the hard barky skin of experienceto insist on a decorumthat rises...

Finally…

Just closed the lid, so to speak, on what seems to be weeks of school-related paperwork. I am excited to go to my classes tomorrow with only those classes on my mind--not the letters home to parents, the secondary school recs, the grades and comments to homeroom...

Doing What Needs To Be Done

The rain falls;The grass grows:Nothing is done.Nothing is left undone~Buddha Sometimes you just do what you got to do, and that never changes from the first time you take out the trash as a kid until the time in life where you are taking care of little chores...

A New Hearth

It has been a long time since I wrote a simple old "this is what I am going to do today" post. So this is what I am going to do today: [and trust me, it will have nothing--absolutely nothing--to do with school work:)] Before the true winter settles in, I am going to...

The Enigma

Black Pond is not as deepas it is dark, dammedsome century agobetween ledges of granite and an outcropping of leaning fir, huckleberry, and white pine. For years I have paddled and trolled;swam, fished, sailed and sometimessimply tread water in the night trying to...

Pruning

These trees have driven so many friends batty, wedged in unstable crotches, embracing hollow, heart-rotted limbs, reaching tentatively, maddened with indecision. From a distance your gestures are very lobsterlike— waving a last embattled claw, as if dueling some...

When the same thing happens again

I wonder if God is testing me, giving Me some affable warning Or, perhaps, a more Stern rebuke, replaying A foolish mistake, Rehashing and reminding me Of a harsher possibility. It is only a small 10 mm wrench tightening A loose bolt on the throttle body, slipping...

Somewhere North of Bangor

Somewhere north of Bangor
on the run from Tennessee.
Lost in back scrub paper land
in section TR-3.
It’s hit him he’s an outlaw
a Georgia cracker’s son,
who killed a man in Nashville
with his daddies favorite gun.
It’s hit him with the loneliness
of wondering where you are
on a long ago railway
stretched between two stars.

A New Beginning

I guess if there is any constant in my life, it is new beginnings. This blog--and this website--is another new beginning starting here late on a cold night on my back porch. I've been keeping a blog (in fact several blogs) since the first blogs made their way on to...

No Dad To Come Home To

Rain’s falling outside of Boston—
Thank God I’m not working tonight.
I’ve got six of my own,
And a stepdaughter at home,
And a momma keeping things right.
I wonder if they’re at the table
With their puzzles, their papers and pens?
When I get off the highway
And pull in that driveway,
Will they run to the window again?

Rainmaker

I loved the rain last night. Last week, in a bow to reality, I reclaimed my gardens and made them into yard. Four of my kids got poison ivy in the process and I (and more "they") got an extra ten feet of width to add to the soccer field--for really that is about the...

The Old Tote Road

I clabber down the old tote road towards the red pine forest, leaning on my staff, skirting boulder-strewn ruts and small gullies carved out by two days of heavy rain. It is only a mile or so from our cabin, still, my wife makes me wear a pouch with an iPhone and an...

China Journal: Part One

I The dull staccato throb in light rain on a dark night. Unseen barges make their way up the QianTian River—concrete shores marked by the arch of the bridge, the spans of beam stretched on beam, the impeccable symmetry of the street-lights broken by a stream...

A New Paradigm

Sometimes, like right now, I long for a pile of papers on my lap that I could speed through, grade with a series of checks and circles, a few scribbled lines of praise or condemnation, and drop into a shoebox on my desk and say, "Here are your essays!" But I...

Redefining Literacy

My life is the poem I could have writ, But I could not both live and utter it ~Henry David Thoreau The common man goes to an orchard to taste the fruit. The rich man man learns how to plant his own orchard. The poet, however, grows an even better fruit and gives...

The Tide

They are building a world and the plastic is fading: Margaret and Eddie's buckets are split, pouring out the warm Atlantic as they race along the tidal flat, filling pools connected by frantically dug canals. Tommy squats naked and screams in guttural joy at the...

The Right Side of the Inevitable

Like birds of a feather, we gather together, 'Cuz they're feeling exactly like you... ~John Prine I am not afraid of being a white minority. I had lunch today with a Jamaican drummer, a Ugandan farmer, and a Senagalese potter. I don’t say this out of...

This new spring begs attention

And shivers its literal timbers. Cold, wet and pleading, Scarred by winter winds And pasty snows, My small field and patch of woods Is now a monument To aging neglect. Shorn limbs and branches Hang high and tangled in the Sugar maples (Widow makers we called them Back...

Going Google?

When you find yourself in the majority, it's time to join the minority ~Mark Twain I have to admit, Google is pretty impressive. The whole set of features that are offered to the public and to educators for free is pretty astounding: email, document creation and...

Trawler

Leave the fog stillness
of a cold harbor town;
cup our hands
in the warm diesel sound—
leave while the children
are calmed in their dreams
by light buoys calling:
“Don’t play around me.”

The Silver Apples of the Moon.

Stories are a communal currency of humanity. ― Tahir Shah, In Arabian Nights The most powerful and enduring connection we share as a human race is our desire and need to share stories. We engage in the art of storytelling more than most of us ever realize; whether we...

Chores

The day sometimes slip away from me, a huge pine half-bucked in the backyard, the kids old tree fort cut into slabs, a ton of coal waiting to be moved in a train of buckets to the bin. Sipping cold water on the back deck, sharpening the dulled teeth of a worn...

The Inn

Every Thursday, for some thirty years, I have been spending this same time each week wrapping up the loose ends of the day before heading down to the inn to play to whomever and whatever shows up. Tonight looks like a fun night: Maroghini will be with me for his last...

No Dad To Come Home To

Reflecting on Literature

I am constantly asking my students (and myself) to reflect on the literature they, and I, read. As I have grown older—and not necessarily wiser—I find myself only reading literature that I am sure will prod me out of my intellectual and emotional torpor, like a lizard...

The Blathering of Teachers

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions. ~Benjamin Franklin Maybe we are born more to ignore than to listen. I understand too well how easy it is to ignore the blatherings of teachers. I was a master of it once myself, so why...

The Threshing

I trace her charging through the cornfield shaking the timbers of the ready crop startling up the blackbirds, and surprisingly, a jay. It’s the jay who startles me— who with two quick pulls wrests itself from the transient green, screaming back from its familiar scrub...

A Monday Ramble

There is always a hard shift for me at the end of the summer, and today is that day for me. I miss the freedom of last week: I'd wake in the morning, come out to the deck to write poetry or work on my novel--but now today, I feel like I should be preparing for school,...

Metamorphoses

It’s something I‘ve hardly ever thought of:
this simple and rattling old diesel
has always gotten me there and then some;
and so at first I think this sputtering
is just some clog, and easily explained:
some bad fuel maybe, from the new Exxon,
or just shortsightedness on maintenance.
I’ve always driven in the red before,
and these have all been straight highway miles —

Many Miles To Go

I see it in your eyes
and in the ways you try to smile;
in the ways you whisper—I don’t know—
and put it all off for a while;
then you keep on keeping on
in the only way you know:
you’re scared of where you’re going
and who’ll catch you down below.

In the unfolding chores

Raccoon

I’ve stopped the chinks with newspaper and rags wedged tightly against the wind blowing cold three days now. I feed the fire and curse its hissing and steaming mixing green oak with sticks of dried pine calling myself Raccoon grown fat in the suburbs sleeping in...

Molting

I am always molting; leaving my hollowed skin in awkward places, scaring people and making them jump. They touch me and think I’m real; then laugh and say things like “What a riot.” I’m tired of this changing of skins. I’d rather stumble on myself and be fooled; and...

The Street I Never Go Down

by Fitz | Nov 18, 2017 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

As is often the case, I sit here with good intent to write my end-of-term comments--a dry litany of repeated phrases dulled by. obligation--and find myself instead writing poetry, the stuff I would rather share with my students who already know that I care dearly...

Joshua Sawyer Podcast

by Fitz | Nov 11, 2017 | Fitz Podcasts, Journal | 0 Comments

Upcoming Shows & Events

by Fitz | Nov 1, 2017 | Calendar | 0 Comments

Fitz & Friends at The Colonial Inn Concord, MA Thursday, November 2, 10:30-12:00 This Weekend.... The Salty Dawgs at The Colonial Inn Saturday, November 4, 10:30-12:00

The Storm of Fallibility

by Fitz | Oct 29, 2017 | Journal | 0 Comments

One good cigar is better than two bad cigars, or so it seems right now. It is a beautiful and stormy night--pouring rain and howling wind, and I thought a good smoke would be a fitting end to a busy and over-booked week. As it goes, I bought a couple of cheap...

Crows & Swallows Release

by Fitz | Oct 21, 2017 | Journal | 0 Comments

There is seldom a red-carpet celebration when a book of poetry is released, so I will keep this a quiet and humble affair. My newest book of poetry, “Crows & Swallows” is now on iBooks, so fresh you can almost smell the ink. My business model is unchanged: It is a...

When the same thing happens again

by Fitz | Oct 7, 2017 | Crows and Swallows, Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

Know Thyself…

by Fitz | Sep 29, 2017 | Essays, Journal | 0 Comments

I have been here before

by Fitz | Sep 9, 2017 | Crows and Swallows, Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

Trying to pull a final day Back into the night, execute Some stay of time, Some way to wrap The fabric of Summer Around the balky, frame of Fall, sloughing My skin, unable to stop This reptilian ecdysis— This hideous morphing Into respectability. My students, tame As...

Wrenching Day

by Fitz | Jul 13, 2017 | Journal, Teaching | 0 Comments

It has certainly been a long time since wisdom ruled the day. I did get up and run in the rain, and now I am preparing to do some “wrenching” on my motorcycle. I am trying to temper my eagerness to ride with my desire to get everything “right” on the bike--without...

Yesterday did not become a poem

by Fitz | Jul 9, 2017 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

Nothing became something else; No thoughts filled my head With wonder or wisdom. Listless sky. Jumbled frames. Fleeting images: Chattering squirrels, Distant rumbling Of rush hour traffic. Today I am more determined, But all that is left Is the promise Of tomorrow.

How do I know

by Fitz | Jul 8, 2017 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

what I know? The sharp angles of this simple cottage perfected in every board sawn, shingle split and beam hewn into place goes together placed, splined, slid together, bound more by intuition than knowing.

In the unfolding chores

by Fitz | Jul 7, 2017 | Journal, Poetry | 0 Comments

« Older Entries

Next Entries »