Maryland, my Maryland.... This is 7 p.m. and not yet mid June.

The weather goes Southern Gothic. Stabbed or shot, you'd sweat to death before you bled out. Either way, the humidity would weigh your eyelids down. Sleep on, dream on. Wherever you have made it, the weather will be nicer, the air worth the effort of breathing.

I tend to roll my eyes at folks that say they are giving it 110%, just not a possibility the way percents work. But dammit, if Maryland's humidity ain't giving it 120% this morning. And we aren't even slightly into summer, yet.

Listening to the recycling truck die as it moves through the neighborhood. It's like an ice cream truck through these geographies, but with the suffering of all Hell in its voice.

Sign of another day, the voice of a chain saw. Woody suburbia looks for a bit more of the sky.

One of those mornings where the dogs of the neighborhood measure out the space of things in barks. The lot of them. For a moment, it’s as everywhere as the sunshine and just as happy.

Between the wind and me, all the silence of a blue sky.

Man, the trees have been generous. We've had enough pollen over the last week or so to call a snow day. Every morning I sweep clouds of it off this desk.

Praise the spider for dropping his shadow onto the page of the book >>warning-warning<< as it was determinedly dropping toward the head above that very book. Apparently, I'm Spiders' Man, the daily attention I seem to be getting at this outdoor desk of mine, no clue what the fancy might be.

How a spider likes to be on the edge of things... like the rim of my coffee cup! Watching this one and thinking about how it has two ways of understanding space: its legs and then this ability to fly with the thread. Those are two completely different ways of understanding landscape.

The way a darkening day becomes frog song.

While I am not as self-centered as to think that ALL the spiders that fall from the sky land on me, it is surprising how many that do. I must conclude that there are a lot of spiders falling from the sky. Everywhere. All the time. Keep that mouth closed when you look up.

A spider drops in on me. It is hardly bigger than the tip of a pen, the strand it flew in on such a long line. It's ink has to be up. Let's just watch it and see where it goes now it has landed in the new world of here. See what I mean? Where is my discipline?

The lights-go-out moment of a quickly passing cloud. Still haven't reached for a notebook.

If I don't get out a notebook soon and make a list of things I need to get done, I'll lose the day to watching clouds and listening to the wind shake out leaves. Oh, the discipline required to work at table outside.

I look up into the pollen wind blowing through a patch of sunlight in front of my face. Wow, I didn’t know the air could be that full.

downpour-- all the lawnwork goes quiet

No, we are not going to die... poets.org/poem/words-w...

I was always told to think outside the box from inside a cubicle. I wanted to invent triangles, but I only went around in circles.

Under-caffeinated grading = grumpy grading. Perhaps I should have some mercy and make another pot of coffee.

It's on our schedule, is it on yours? Books In Bloom returns to the Merriweather District's Color Burst Stage in #downtowncolumbiamd this Saturday, May 9th. www.eventeny.com/events/books...

Lordy. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Must be National Whack Your Weeds Day. What a din.

‘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.