A simple poem in a Chaucerian structure that conveys the simple innocence of a childhood along the Texas Gulf Coast.

A deeply personal tribute to my childhood friend Tracy on what would have been his 62nd birthday, reflecting on our shared roots in Gilchrist, Texas—a town erased by Hurricane Ike—and the indelible imprints left on our hearts by those we love. This remembrance honors friendship, loss, and the echoes of childhood that never fade.

A quadrille poem for the dVerse prompt dives into the tales that shaped me—Puff’s fading magic, Gulliver’s sharp satire, Jonah’s stubborn faith—and the beachy wonder where I first heard them. Fish, wish, and childhood spells: stories that still shimmer like sunlight on the water.

My childhood at the beach is a constant muse for poetry and a guide for how to live, an everlasting gift from my parents, who chose to leave suburbia for a life on the coast that would their children to be children and their lives to authentic and grounded in nature.

An old photo of my Mom, Nancy Harvell, with an Olympic torch. The flame of her memory burns bright.

Crabs caught just off our dock at Gumbo Cove were perfectly satisfying and reminiscent of my childhood at the beach in Gilchrist, TX.

Still Life: Seashells with Shellac on a Paper Bag.

Family-memory stories gain a patina with age and become the stuff of legend. The Story of Chicken is one of those stories.

Thanksgiving weekend, eight of us family members spanning three generations packed into my Honda Pilot and headed down to the Bolivar Peninsula where I grew up.  We were on a mission to visit Dad’s favorite restaurant down there, and remember him. It was a perfect…

This rough little poem came spilling out of me as I thought of those halcyon sand-ridden childhood days and so many memories flooded in. Everything seemed so safe, so permanent, so lively-lovely in our tiny town of 600, Gilchrist, Texas.

Birds and more birds enjoying the mild winter in Gilchrist, Texas on the Bolivar Peninsula: herons, sandpipers, brown pelicans and seagulls. A great day trip from Houston.

This little memoir is dedicated to everyone who loved my brother Steve, and has the same bigger-but-now-broken heart because of his presence in your life.