the young grass stands slight
and fragile against the cold.
All articles filed in writing
prelude
the sharp blade pierced the greening grass
and shovelfuls of soil revealed wakened worms
shrinking away from the light
How a poem gets written
Last autumn when I got to do a talk about “the art of noticing” — the relationship betwen wonder and the act of creating — one of my friends asked what my creative process was like. My first thought, honestly, was “what process?”
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a poem without a title
i have passed the point
of the lines composed
in my head
even this
and is it possible even on Easter even on the day when all things began being made new is it possible that even on this day of days i could with one breath bless God and with the next curse humanity? o, my God, what is it in me that responds this way? what pride…
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denouement
in the space between now and what’s next
fishermen sorrow and demons rage
for his burial
her hand lifts the jar
the alabaster shatters
fragrance fills the air
An extravagance of snowflakes
Winter doesn’t always bring snow to my neck of the Middle West. Sometimes we get freezing rain, sometimes we get 60-degree days in February, and sometimes we just have long stretches of frigid weather where the ground turns rock-hard and the faces of the limestone bluffs become encrusted with stalactites of ice. But this season the snow has visited us again – three times before winter even officially started, and twice more since the new year.
Read Moreremembering the future
i’ve lost a poem. this, i suppose, is the danger of composing most works online and then transferring them to computer file or paper later. it feels like having lost a friend or a treasured memory. actually, i wonder if i deleted it in a moment of panic. it described something i’d seen quite vividly…
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snapshots of summer
we were away from home that day, somewhere out in the city, and got caught in the rain — the glorious kind of chilly downpour that catches one unexpectedly in the summer. when we returned we changed out of our wet things and gathered in the kitchen, just the three of us, as i recall,…
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