The sky is as big as memory. The light is open like hope. And the mountains surround thought so that all we are is right here, driving home.  read more »

And it was, sunny, bright, hot. It was a day, like any other summer day, sky above, earth below, birds in between.  read more »

 At least at one point in each of our lives there is a dramatic pause, a rest in the score while we look around for the coda.  read more »

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Sunday night I sat in front of my fire and read the NY Times. It is winter, it is cold, windchill against the walls of this old house, sweaters and tea, economy, politics, Gaza. Today is the inauguration of the 44^th president of the United States. It’s been said that one of the influencing factors in this presidential race was one campaign’s better use of words--more convincing, more visionary, more “hopeful.” How we use language, in some ways, cuts to the core of why we write, why words matter, and for heaven sakes, why we even bother to talk. Our words hold the potential to advance ideals, to help distinguish right from wrong, to motivate, to affect…and sometimes potential never becomes more than an idea, and sometimes it seems that war is what happens when we run out of things to say.  read more »

At the end of the day, I’m 41 years old and still wishing on stars and still writing poems believing that if the words line up, if the right words combine, they add up to some kind of sum for which there is no formula, no linear equation, just a string of words running across a page toward someone’s eyes, to be seen, to be heard, words that fill-in the open spaces, like punctuation on the lost hours of days when we think about what we’ve lost, who we miss, why we love, and why we stay.  read more »

This morning I received an email from a poet in Sierra Leone, cc’d were 6 additional names, a handful of the most celebrated poets in this war-torn west African country. A year and a half ago I was in Sierra Leone, talking metaphors and scratching down words with former boy soldiers, young girl mothers, village elders, and poets.  read more »