C.M. Rivers

"The point of being an artist is that you may live." ~ Sherwood Anderson

  • Robert Frost Quote

    “I suppose I’m just a bit lazy, so I’ve had a lazy, scrape-along life, and enjoyed it.  I fight everything academic.  The time we waste in trying to learn academically – the talent we starve with academic teaching!”    -Robert Frost Continue reading

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  • Impaled Digits

    Growing up, I had the privilege of enduring several ingrown toenail surgeries, which culminated in having a third of the nail removed on each of my big toes.  Of course, by that time I was reading a magazine and whistling to myself while blood spurted across the room like a Monty Python skit.  Yet I… Continue reading

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  • Bittersweet: A Portrait of Professional Cooking

    The kitchen end of the restaurant business is a fascinating industry to work in, if you’re fascinated with minds warped by the toll of long hours, intense stress, and hearing the same songs ooze out of grease-addled radio speakers. Then there are the bodies attached to those cerebral cortexes – bodies beaten into submission over… Continue reading

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  • Stillness

    Like so many things, it comes when I have given in, given up the search, released the desire, turned my attention elsewhere.  It comes in crumpled-up moments – in splintered, fickle doses. It’s as if my expectation of it is the very thing that prevents it.  I might be on the town running errands, ticking them… Continue reading

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  • Prayer

    May I see through the dark, without even looking. May I hear above the noise, without even listening. May I know beyond a doubt, without even thinking. May I trust in myself, without even trying.   Continue reading

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  • Through the Door

    We live in the crook of fortune’s flexible arm, an arm that winds up at a predetermined and rigid hand.  We live both sides, both ways, each a tiger, surveying from ripples wound about the tightened stake of natural selection. We’d love a look at the other side without going through, a rare and much sought-after mystical optometry,… Continue reading

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  • Sometimes A Rainstorm

    Sometimes a rainstorm reminds me to sit in easy solitude as you have shown me.  They might assume you were once a bohemian clown with squash blossoms braided around your ankles, the way you lean back and cross your legs, bringing that demitasse cup to your lips, followed by a forkful of smoked cheddar omelet… Continue reading

  • Poseidon

    Dear Diary, rainy morning, early, dreary.  The light coming through the water’s surface was the loveliest I’ve seen.  I’m exhausted, drained.  Aphrodite took it all out of me, then she took me on a wooden ship and showed me the absurdities of Men.  Now the mermaids are upon me again, but this time my hair… Continue reading

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  • Six Thoughts On Mary Oliver

    Mary, who helps us remember tenderness when we find an insect on our pillow, or a bat in the house. Mary, who reminds us of a hundred walks in the wilderness, even as we stare at lamp-lit sheetrock and worry about work. Mary, who tells us what we knew the moment we were born but have forgotten. Mary, who makes us feel less alone… Continue reading

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  • Constance

    Constance

    Here’s a little something I wrote in honor of my high school English teacher, Constance Person.  It was a big class in a big high school in the big city, and I was terrified of being called upon.  I was a shy country mouse who was used to small classes in a small school in… Continue reading

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