Mary Oliver
A horn of plenty, if you just look for it
Thanksgiving is a good and necessary holiday but perhaps more so in times of want than of plenty. What is wanting this Thanksgiving 2020? We want to be together. We want our families, our friends. Most Thanksgiving celebrations are pared down this year with families separated by virus or politics, some permanently so, thanks to […]
MoreLingering in Carlsbad with Megan
Whenever I come across a Little Free Library, my sense of goodness in the world ticks up a few notches. If I should ever come across a Little Free Library with a poem tucked inside—a Mary Oliver poem that I’d never read before—jeez-o-flip, my goodness meter would shoot to eleven. (Spinal Tap fans will get the […]
MoreAmerican Rumi
To the mountain of tributes to the great Mary Oliver, I add this little pebble. In a world with so many hysterical people running loose, shouting and fighting and festering outrage, I miss her. Or I miss the idea of her, the poet walking along the shore in her barn jacket, quiet and […]
MoreMore sweet potatoes, less election hash
This past week I’ve heard stories of people not going home for Thanksgiving because they’re upset their relatives voted differently than they did. Add one more to the list of disheartening effects the 2016 election has had on our country. Thanksgiving is the holiday that’s supposed to bring us together. Thanksgiving is a holiday […]
MoreMy dog ate National Poetry Day
Today is National Poetry Day, and I feel like I’ve been caught without my school project completed. I’m stalling in the hallway, scribbling out enough verbiage to meet the word count, hoping I don’t get asked to read it out loud. I got nothing prepared, folks. But as it happens, I visited Artprize […]
MorePoems for the Porkies
Every summer for the past seven I’ve made a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Year after year, its wild beauty calls me back. (You can read about my 2010 visit here.) Visiting the U.P. unsettles me. I’m enough a suburbanite that I feel on edge in a place with so many trees and so […]
MoreA couple of gifts
A dear friend gave me this elf for my birthday. Nothing better than a gift you didn’t know you wanted, a gift that makes you feel that someone has studied you, understood you and desired to please you. I’m delighted with this felted fellow! I see hours of amusement ahead with his pose-able body and […]
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