Scenes from a snowy afternoon bring to mind a favorite Jim Harrison quote: “I'm hoping to be astonished tomorrow by I don’t know what.”

"Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain." ― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

So much of rewriting is waking up your verbs, my God.

New cookie plates in sour apple & pink shadow. I can’t get enough of these glazes!🍏💖 #pottery

My December #CraftArticle is all about reflections, looking back at the end of a year or at the end of a long project and contemplating the achievement in that. What did we write? What did we learn? What did we gain? What did we overcome? prattlefogandgravelrap.substack.com/p/turning-ar...

Liminality In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors. William Blake

“It is not our job to remain whole. We came to lose our leaves Like the trees, and be born again, Drawing up from the great roots.” —Robert Bly

today is my birthday, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to celebrate than having a new poem out in Burial Magazine! infinite gratitude to Z. H. Gill for giving this one a beautiful home :) 🙏

one hand opens in grief the other in gratitude pressing them together to pray — Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “One on Thanksgiving”

egret extravaganza

“Don’t you think it’s odd that we appreciate absurdity?” “I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.”

Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is a perfect novella biblioklept.org/2025/11/23/d...

At the link, this week's oasis of small sanities in one place – how to love the world more, what it's like to meet an orca, how not to be a victim of success: mailchi.mp/themarginali...

the measurable distance between poems one maple leaf falls then another one Canada goose calls then another one snowflake drifts then another one memory arrives then another one lifetime then another and another #vss365 #measurable

“Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of the soul’s passage through the valley of this life, its adventure in time, in history.” —Stanley Kunitz in conversation with Bill Moyers

Excited to have a flash in the beautiful latest issue of The Maine Review.♥️ www.mainereview.com/the-wing/

Ruth Stone

“We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” —T. S. Eliot, from “Four Quartets”

Keats, born 230 years ago today, on the measure of compassion www.themarginalian.org/2019/07/02/k...

the hallowed seam

Sharing . . .because her words are always a balm open.substack.com/pub/annelamo...

“How surely gravity’s law, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of even the smallest thing and pulls it toward the center of the world… This is what things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

Many, many warm thanks to Court Harler at Flash the Court for publishing my prose poem "What It Takes, What It Gives." It's had a long journey to here, and I'm so grateful to see it published. The work that inspired the piece is Lee Krasner's Palingenesis. flashthecourt.com/2025/10/03/w...

be not afraid. focus instead on the bright day coming, when all will be returned to a way long before. the atomic love is all. it causes the wind to blow, the flowers to lean towards the sun. it is the sound of the waves whispering to the shore.

Yesterday I was handed a perfect fall leaf, deep red and wonderfully shaped—shared because we love and appreciate these things and the moments and wonder they give us. Holding a gifted fall leaf up to the setting sun is its own prayer of thanks and wow.

“I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.” ― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

The grace in letting go How a leaf loves the air as it falls

Another in my series of libraries Stonyhurst College library, Clitheroe #SomethingBeautiful #LoveLibraries #EveryLibraryMatters #Libraries #Library #LibrarySky #libsky

What a tender and nourishing piece from @mariapopova.bsky.social. My heart is breaking about so many things, and I also know we must find sustenance in the midst of it as a “a countercultural act of courage and resistance.”

“When you forgive, you are free to move on in life, to grow, to no longer be a victim. When you forgive, you slip the yoke, and your future is unshackled from your past.” —Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu, “The Book of Forgiving”

I talked with poet and writer Maggie Smith about finding possibility in between-states and the freedom of having your life implode. Illustration by Harriet Lee-Merrion. @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social @tricyclemag.bsky.social tricycle.org/article/on-n... #creativelife #authorinterview

Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier. We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt 🌺

“Curiosity is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.” —Tom Robbins

We all have to live with ourselves. . .eventually (if not immediately) that truth is meaningful.

“For one to be free there must be at least two.” ― Zygmunt Bauman #Photography Martin Parr

‘The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.’ ~ Carl G. Jung writingforwellbeing.co.uk

"We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it." - Mary Oliver Artist: Alberta Tiburzi

start small. let the driver merge, let the cashier breathe, let the stranger’s silence mean something other than indifference. #poetry #poem #art #digitalart #mentalhealth #compassion

Monday sights

“When we listen with our mind, we understand more of life. When we listen with our heart, we feel more of life. When we listen with our entire being and spirit, we are transformed and joined with life itself.” —Mark Nepo, “Seven Thousand Ways to Listen”

The poets and the storytellers, holding the powerful history of Juneteenth.

Today's the *official* pub day for Human/Animal: a bestiary in essays @wlupress.bsky.social I will lean into the joy—Celebrate with me! The brilliant @carolinehagood.bsky.social interviewed me: open.substack.com/pub/caroline... AND It was excerpted in @msmagazine.com! msmagazine.com/2025/04/21/w...