‘James Schuyler once told an interviewer that he didn’t write the kind of poetry that attracted critics. “It’s too easy,” he added. It wasn’t easy, though, to arrive at his kind of ease. He’d sometimes spend up to a year tinkering with a poem.’ Matthew Bevis: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

A single frog, all effort at the moment, calls out without any idea of loneliness in its voice. There’s a lesson in that. Just sing into the silence. Believe and be.

My desk mate today.

Might be coming down with a serious case of blue sky disease. youtu.be/0UqZAYVivzQ

Warts and all. Go #Mississippi apnews.com/article/amer...

Been waiting forever to bring Sarah Kay to Columbia. It is happening soon for this year's Blackbird Poetry Festival! hocopolitso.org/blackbird-po...

Residences at Vantage Point presents The Author Next Door on Friday, April 10, 11 a.m. Reading & discussion, featuring novelist Tudor Alexander & Howard County Youth Poet Laureate Penelope Tofigh, moderated by literature instructor George Clack. Free & open to the public. patch.com/maryland/col...

All that is left of the day is the frog scream.

All the green that wasn't there yesterday.

Manhattan fingerprints on —brick-by-brick— all of it

Tuesday: amber pitching and starting to tiger's eye.

Will the day shake a poem out of itself? Not looking for much. Wind sway and the drift of clouds. Some last piece of sun caught in a fern shadow.

Wow, where the conjuring stops. www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

sunny day and the way a crow shadow finds its way back to its crow

Once more unto the beech, dear friend, once more (singular, a particular homage here). The breaching beech, one year’s leaves sentry the buds of the next’s. We carry on.

Who will be the next Howard County Youth Poet Laureate? Could it be you? To learn what you need to do and to submit, visit www.hocoarts.org/grant/youth-... Pictured is the 2025 Youth Poet Laureate Penelope Tofigh at the announcement reading at Busboys and Poets in Columbia, Maryland.

Dog walkers on the path out back paying attention to only the three-by-five screen of their phones. Leash-end, the dogs are losing their minds in every direction, so much to pay attention to in this precious and real world. Pure joy and bark.

Deadline for this grant is 1 April! Application is free and you're old enough to apply I'll bet you've got all the photos and text you need already. (By "figurative" below I mean figurative proximate, vs. nonrepresentational, but there's nothing in the guidelines against abstract work.)

Insects really are coming out of everywhere (not seeming to know what to do). Wings! I have wings! And then just circling in infinity patterns ad infinitum.

So many insects out not knowing how to insect.

Buzzards circling directly overhead. Can't tell if they are ascending or descending. Oh, descending. Maybe I had better move a little be more. Don't want them looking at/considering me, not today anyway. Fun being back at the outside desk again.

Morning of absolute disorganization, ENOUGH! (Did I say that out loud? All the frogs went quiet.)

And... LOUD... all at once the frogs noise blurts into the day. Power of sunshine. A little later, a hawk shadow will bring the silence out of them. For the length of half a minute. Never realized how much frog scream is in the hawk call: amplified, clear and there. #distractionsoftheoutsidedesk

So many geese there are V-s within the V. The need for transit noise is something. I wonder if there is a particular reason for it?

Here I am looking like a right idiot. Whatever it takes to share the work of Ram Brisueño with more folks. Check out the new issue of Little Patuxent Review where his work is featured. Don't worry, there are no pictures of me in it.

Just on the other side of yesterday's The Little Patuxent Review reading debuting the poem, let's share congratulations to @chrissystegmanpoet.bsky.social, winner of the 2025 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize! Winning poem & learn a bit about the poet in the link. hocopolitso.org/2026/02/17/m...

Sun’s been gone so long from the morning walls it goes straight to painting shadows.

Available now at littlepatuxentreview.org Issue launch party this Sunday at The Carriage House in Columbia, Md. (3pm). in it you will find my essay accompanying the wonderful work of cover artist Ram Brisueño. Go to the above website for all the details (and to get yourself a copy).

Late winter and it sounds an early summer rain, almost humid. Yes, humid has a sound.

I thought we had another day or so before the world war began.

Saddened to hear of the passing of Coleman Barks this week. Here is a treasure of an interview with Bill Moyers at the Dodge Poetry Festival when was held in Waterloo, New Jersey. Obituary in the comments. vimeo.com/33285728

For the first time all winter, the sunlight seems to be entering the little poplar grove out the windows, entering and wanting to settle-in, not just a grazing over. Could this be the first sign of Spring?

The moon and Jupiter above, I take recycling to the curb. The three of us will let the future play out.

Any one looking forward to the Sate of the halluciNation speech? Maybe up for a game of rhetorical devices bingo?

And the trees played catch.

So far we are at a warm and crappy snow. If you can’t stick to our driveway, you need to go back to snow school. This storm is coming in a wee bit on the over promoted side. Morning is hours later, so we will see.

Arsenal won. It’s snowing and maybe even accumulating. I can read now, right? Caoilinn Hughes if you are interested. Socks off brilliant.

Was at that just yesterday.

We go again.

They’ve got the rain part right so far. It’s almost as gentle as the hush of snow, the skylights wet with its blur.

I call these snowdrops before the snow drops.

Insomnia’s frenemy, rain on the skylight glass.

Good lord, they had cats back when!

The desk has almost thawed. That’s exciting.

Key West treasures from Books & Books. Not languoring at the moment. That warm spell was before the freeze and steadfast snow.

Spent the day in Annapolis talking to politicians (who happen to get it) about arts funding. Not a bad day. The Walking Monks were in proximity. I believe we were chorus by presence for each other.

It astounds me how ‘everyone’ thinks they are normal and wriggles questions at the behavior of others.

A new entertainment: watching water clear and shimmy in various ways instead of its cautionary white and blue motionlessness. And then there is the going from dullness to sparkle as it takes on what to do with light.

Looking out the window to see the deer, also fed up with the frozen water ground cover, taking the plowed bike path through the woods. Nine of them. Looks ridiculous, but smart. Maybe they are evolving.

Living under snow-covered skylights has been like being in a spider’s silk cocoon, prey captured and unable to look out. Does one escape such? Today, there’s a half circle of thawed hope most of a penny wide. I can almost make out something, the memory of being alive.