Elroy Bode

  • Afterword

    IN CLINT In the late afternoon I drive down to Clint to be in touch with its small-town pleasures. I walk along the canal, [...] Full Story

  • Afterword

    I REMEMBER CARLTON STOKES In his prime As he drove toward his ranch in the June heat, he looked out at the land and [...] Full Story

  • Afterword

    I don’t know how to start writing again after so long an absence. I cannot make words move. They have become heavy weights. I [...] Full Story

  • Those Big Band Days

    I miss the Big Band era of the 1930s and ’40s. I miss the bands themselves, the songs, the singers, the sidemen, the arrangements [...] Full Story

  • Summertime Sketches

    EARTH-LIFE I need the earth-life, the ordinary countryside moment, but I cannot make this deep affection seem important to most people I know. On [...] Full Story

  • Thoughts of Dust

    I drive into New Mexico. In the summer heat I walk down a roadside in the Gila River Valley beside dry horehound and roadside [...] Full Story

  • Desert Dusk

    Christmas Past, El Paso: It was after dark, and cars with their headlights properly dimmed crept in long, solemn lines block after block. They [...] Full Story

  • Alone With the Greasewood and the Sage

    I move along on my own two good feet down an Upper Valley road, the sun mildly shining after an early morning rain, the [...] Full Story

  • Dateline

    I sit in darkness on the back porch. Cars are in the distance and on nearby streets. Yells come from games in the nearby [...] Full Story

  • Commentary

    Richard Phelan, my friend of 50 years, is dead.Early in the morning on March 18, he went to a field across from his apartment [...] Full Story