We’re accustomed to thinking of nightmares as dreams that allow us to feel emotions we wall off in our waking hours, the surfacing of subconscious fears to the conscious mind. But we don’t have a corresponding word for dreams that bring joy.
MoreDay 22 of the 2020 countdown finds us on a small pond in a nature center, contemplating contemplation. One of the biggest gifts this year brought us is time and space for contemplation. Priceless Gifts by Anna Swir translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan An empty day without events. And that […]
MorePoem in Thanks by Thomas Lux Lord Whoever, thank you for this air I’m about to in- and exhale, this hutch in the woods, the wood for fire, the light—both lamp and the natural stuff of leaf-black fern, and wing. For the piano, the shovel for ashes, the moth-gnawed blankets, the stone-cold water […]
MoreTo 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 […]
MoreThanks by W.S. Merwin Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you we are standing by the […]
MoreIf I had any sense I’d be in the kitchen right now, chopping and endlessly washing mixing bowls and spatulas. Instead I’m sitting at the computer. I’ll pay for it tomorrow with panic and exhaustion, but meantime, here’s a few poems for Thanksgiving. At the grocery store I left Czeslaw Milosz’s”Encounter” in an empty […]
MoreHere’s the thing about my small folder of poems about death. Having more than one poem about death is like getting a bag of zucchini from your neighbor—you don’t know what to do with an overload. (I’m just realizing this very second that owning, not to mention labeling, a small folder of poems about death is […]
MoreThe Travelling Onion by Naomi Shihab Nye “It is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship —why I haven’t been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.” — Better Living Cookbook When […]
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