Tim Torkildson's Clown Alley

  The scooter lay there. Abandoned. Sadness welled up in me like bad clams. I couldn't go on, but returned home. Opening my vault, I too...

  We raised our flags to national unity in a cutting wind. Our bare heads were bowed in solemn cutlery. We rent our raincoats and covered ou...

  It was 'Adopt a Rock' Week in town. So I found an orphaned rock, with no mountain to nourish it. And took it home. At first the ro...

 "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel . . . " Genesis 49:4 Unstable as water, my wavering strength can rush unabated to flood ...

  Lucky East Coast residents, who had the sweetest brand of goodies from old Entenmann's in all this famished land. In the Midwest it wa...

  Things were going pretty smooth at work. I'd been back for a month when the boss called me into her office. She did not greet me wreat...

 " But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people ali...

  Small and delicate -- this girl child looks at the world through white angel's wings. Hot tub in winter? Are these kings and princes o...

  rigid black wires against the pathless pink sky -- the Sunday March grid. Muted red melting into the sullen mountains -- March Sunday morn...

 " For 23 days starting in late January, downtown Ottawa  served as a parking lot  for hundreds of heavy-duty trucks, pickup trucks and...