WORDS
This is where you will find my unpublished poems and fiction, reviews of works by other authors, and guest posts.
The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower
The force that through the green fuse drives the flowerThe force that through the green fuse drives the flowerDrives my green age; that blasts the roots of treesIs my destroyer.And I am dumb to tell the crooked roseMy youth is bent by the same wintry fever.The force...
The Anti-Jazz Of Epic Fury
Referring to the character Horacio Oliveira in Julio Cortizar’s masterpiece novel Hopscotch, one reviewer wrote:He often asks himself how it is possible that humans as a genus, as a species, as an ensemble of civilizations, have arrived at the present day by...
In Like A Lion, Out Like A Lamb
I’m hopelessly stuck in the sixties, seventies and eighties. That’s as far as I go unless I’m forced to function in the present as I am today. I’m pretty good with technology, I guess. I majored in math and economics. God know’s why, as they say, those who believe....
The Anatomy of Saudade
It is a wet, quiet, cold, and somewhat dreary day. My thoughts flex inward like a flock of parakeets with heads tucked under their wings, voices muffled as they speak an instant already gone. Life feels off balance, stuck between a past that can be revisited but...
The Forest
“My house . . .” said Cosimo, and gestured around, at the highest branches, the clouds, “my house is everywhere, everywhere I can climb, going up . . .” The Baron Of The Trees, Italo Calvino In 1958 when I was twelve years old I visited my great uncle Lewis Foster...
Five Different Responses To Clouds
All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds. Richard Brautigan I remember when I first learned about clouds in grade school. We drew pictures of feathery clouds, flat and gloomy clouds, fat Confucius clouds, and giant, dark, menacing genies ready to pounce....
My Osprey Family
They come every spring, my osprey family. From Central America, Mexico, Baja California, along the Southern California coast back up the Pacific Flyway, to the rivers and estuaries of the Mendocino coast. To this place. To my place. There is an instinct of staying...
An Apple A Day
The tasty apples that gave rise to the phrase “as American as apple pie” aren’t native to North America. The seeds journeyed over from Europe like illegal aliens. The spices, cinnamon, nutmeg and clove, sneaked in from Asia via the European spice trade. After years...
The Sea Gull Blogs – Mendocino A Half Century Ago
Sea Gull Restaurant Stories© 2026 David Herstle Jones The Sea Gull Restaurant was a popular hangout in Mendocino during the 1970s and 80s. Lots of things happened there, good and bad. Think in the Morning has posted memories of several of these happenings in our...
Wood Stove
“Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I love to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the...
Great Horned Owl
At three o’clock in the morning a great horned owl hooted outside my bedroom window. Moonlight laughed in the forest. The rain had stopped and the weather had cleared up and I had to get up to pee but I didn’t want to leave my warm bed. I felt like that owl who had...
Why I Cancelled Social Media
I’ve had a number of friends say they miss me on social media. But, when I ask if they’ve read my blog, my novel or my book,of short stories, the answer is often “it’s on my list.” I can’t help but think of the essay Literature and Life by Mario Vargas Llosa.It...