Wednesday’s words to ponder…

“Any person of honor chooses rather to lose his honor than to lose his conscience.”  – Michel de Montaigne  

“The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre; let us leave this commission to men who are more obedient and more supple.”                      – Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne was an influential and key figure of the French Renaissance. The father of modern skepticism is best known for his essays which are among the best ever composed. Furthermore, it is he who is credited with establishing the essay as a recognized genre in literature and was the first to use the word essay when speaking of his writings. Among the most famous writers influenced by the essays of Montaigne were Isaac Asmiov, René Decartes and William Shakespeare.




Le berre de rivière (The river Berre)

“Look deep into nature, and you will understand everything better.”   –  Albert Einestein



Le berre de rivière  (The river Berre)

Tables and chairs

Against an ancient

Stone wall

Across from le


Si vous êtes chanceux

A seat can be yours

Pageant of color

Paints the sky

As the sun disappears


Beneath lies

La berre

Dried up

Fish to dust

Few remaining puddles

Disappear rapidly

To be reborn with

November rains

Un verre de vin rouge

For now

A book

As I wait


Take center


A show that takes

Ma soufflé loin




dans le sable des mots / in the sand of words



“When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.”   –  William Shakespeare


“All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the fest of the mind.”   –  Khalil Gibran


dans le sable des mots / in the sand of words

my hands plunge deeply

this insatiable quest

finding the right verbs,

adjectives and adverbs

the preposition

which when assembled

like Rubik’s puzzle

lead me to what is missing

yet words like sand are


capable of embracing

the power of

la mer

or sliding through my


so strong, she restrains the oceans

 large ships skim

across their surface

she cradles the ravaged

cities swallowed in the

tsunami’s of time

concealing their final

resting place

so delicate

a breeze thrusts them

into oblivion

starfish, shells the

similes and metaphors

dans le sable des mots