But we have music
When I saw Laurie Doctor’s poem in two alphabets yesterday, it reminded me of what emerged at choir this week. Laurie is a gifted calligrapher, painter,…
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Hope is not a lottery ticket
I subscribe to a newsletter about Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Belarus, and living in challenging times. The author, Darya Zorka, is a writer, poet, activist, and documentary…
This land
The late, great Woody Guthrie wrote his most famous song 85 years ago today: This Land Was Made For You and Me. At the bottom of…
Marking time
Some ideas arrive in the form of a dream. ♦ Night is arrogant ♦ particularly if you don’t like winter ♦ but sometimes, as an antidote…
What stories do we need now? redux
I first published this post in September 2020, but the question feels important again: What kind of stories do we need to help us navigate this…
Pathways
Sundays are for living which explains why I neglected to post a found poem yesterday despite my goal of consistency. I spent the day immersed in…
There is a field, and I’ll meet you there
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, There is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, The world is…
Midwinter mudfest
Winter has receded for now, interrupted by an early snow melt resulting in a festival of mud. The word mud, meaning “moist, soft earth,” can be…
The stories we carry, redux
I burrowed in over Christmas and New Year’s to write long hours, stare out windows, dive into memory’s murky seas. I’ve been working on an essay…
A plea to the gods of lost causes
All knots have their purpose: Reef knots bind, sheet bends join, A bowline is a rescue knot For unclaimed souls and haunted minds. Yet no saint…
Comma comma comma comma comma chameleon, redux
Commatology? What’s that? In case you’ve ever wondered where this blog got its name, this post from January 2014 spells it out. I edited a dissertation…