Moments of Witness
https://thewalrus.ca/heaven-spot/ I missed posting a found-poem last Sunday because I was on the road traveling from the Pacific Northwest to the Desert Southwest, a trip I take a couple times a year. Along the way, on the Navajo Nation, there is an abandoned building with some fantastic graffiti. This time around I pulled over and... Continue Reading →
It's Sunday, poetry day here on the blog. I hope you find this one as moving as I do. Happy Easter. The Recordkeeper by Marlanda Dekine-Sapient Soul https://emergencemagazine.org/poem/recordkeeper/ Buy books responsibly through my Bookshop.org store.
I was just talking with a friend about watching our elders grow old. My grandfather died of mesothelioma in a hospital bed many years ago now. I flew to Phoenix from Seattle to see him but had to return home on what turned out to be the day before he died, Thanksgiving. When I leaned... Continue Reading →
Sunday has looped back and so I post a new poem. I found this poem when I was living on a basalt bench above the Crooked River in Central Oregon. The river was at the center of my life as I skirted the canyon edge with the golden eagles and bighorn sheep on my walks... Continue Reading →
Every Sunday I try to find a poem I'd like to share, and every Sunday I marvel at how much great work there is out there. I hope to give you a mix of the old, the less old, the nearly new, and the brand new. Here's one from William Stafford that I particularly like.... Continue Reading →
I love this poem and I find Guernica to be a great place to learn of writers I've not read before. I hope you enjoy this poem as much as I do. https://www.guernicamag.com/doubts-and-a-hesitation/
It's ironic really - so much more time in the house, yet less time writing. I doubt that I'm alone in my response to the pandemic. The whole thing has felt like an indomitable blank page. Poetry fights that feeling, so every weekend I'll share one. Let's start with Tolu Oloruntoba's powerful poem, Heel Poem... Continue Reading →
The black ribbon, cracked and cauterized, carries them like thirst. mouth to throat.Hungry water, they trawl strollers, dogs, bags of to-go food, flimsy face masksclutches of mail toward the mouth. They are soft as water, lifting from the skin of the ribbon in ripples, throat-thirsty, fever-flushed in the sun.
It used to be that all I did and didn't do took place inside the wide open north-reaching arms of the Mountain. Its invitation drew me all my life to the window, the porch, the yard, the shore to accept or refuse. Many times the Mountain hid in the clouds or the smog or even... Continue Reading →
The Bearing Tree 