Welcome
For forty years I wrote in the margins of a working life — poems and snippets of story pounded out on a typewriter between the demands of the day. These past few years I have taken up the keys again. What you will find here is a range of that work: poems, prose, and photographs, gathered across a lifetime.
Much of it circles the same center. In my early twenties I met a young woman I fell madly in love with — my friend, my muse, the mother of my children, my reason for being. For forty-six years we rode the roller coaster of life together. I lost her to a rare cancer in January of 2022. She is in nearly everything I have written since.
If you would like to carry some of it with you, my book — Whispers from My Muse — gathers poems celebrating that life.
About the Author
Dan Rutberg is the son of a physics teacher and a social worker. For forty years he guided nonprofits — national and international institutions across health care, social service, community, and education — through the evolution of the systems they use to serve people and engage their supporters, ultimately as their Chief Information Officer. These past few years, he has returned to the writing he set aside decades ago.
Wisdom Comes in Many Forms
It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either.
Rabbi Tarfon, Pirke Avot 2:21
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest form of appreciation is not to utter the words but to live them.
John F. Kennedy
Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
Dr. Seuss
Latest writing
- Absence in Two TakesOne The dimensions of your absence are infinite. I smile now at my attempts to measure it from within, when the space we filled left no room toContinue reading “Absence in Two Takes”
- LegacyEinstein once wrote to a friend, “People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live.Continue reading “Legacy”
- Sunday MorningMy companions as dawn breaks this Sunday morning are the birds serenading me and the rabbit breaking his fast on the clover scattered across my yard. I sitContinue reading “Sunday Morning”
- Ode to PeaceThey told me you were stillness: the lake with no wind, the held breath, the shut door, the white and waiting room where nothing is allowed to move.Continue reading “Ode to Peace”
- Whisper My NameJust one more embrace one more caress. To hear you sigh, to see your lips form an oh, and then to hear you whisper my name into theContinue reading “Whisper My Name”
- TryingThe sky is still this morning, white, grey clouds with an icing of pink are fixed in place as if they had been hung in the sky asContinue reading “Trying”