Toward a World that Works for Everyone
October 19, 2021 Shall not the soul’s most measureless desires Learn that the very flower and fruit of life Lies all attained in comfortable homes… Are we not homes? And is not all therein? ~Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman, Home All of us have the basic right to live in a clean, well-lighted place. Of […]
October 17, 2021 …Beginnings and endings are clear, but middles, that murk where significance often lurks, are tricky, and joy, which ought to be easy enough to recognize, defies the fastest tripping shutter or eyelash flutter… ~David R. Slavitt, Repetition My impatience keeps bumping to the surface. The sameness of days becomes less tolerable […]
October 15, 2021 There is a moment before a shape hardens, a color sets… Yet something slips through it— looks around, sets out in the new direction, for other lands. Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed… it cannot be after turned back from. ~Jane Hirshfield, The Decision I can’t figure out if […]
October 14, 2021 “Hope” is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all… I’ve heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Yet – never – in Extremity, It asked a crumb – […]
October 12, 2021 If I should have that bravery of gaining love I would hold this hand out, level, warm, for the buffeted snowbound little birds to come and feed for all the years unharmed, if I should have that bravery of love. ~William Stafford, The Bravery of Love It’s quite easy to be […]
October 10, 2021 I sing the body electric… The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones, The exquisite realization of health; O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, O I say now these are the […]
October 7, 2021 The buds are still waiting—unbloomed though long past time— It is long past time— It is long past time. ~Erle Howry, Time It’s October 7. I am still waiting. Things are supposed to be happening. NOW. The elastic property of time renders this lack of events extraordinarily frustrating for me. We’re […]
October 5, 2021 The American common is no collective or princedom but privacies of need & pleasure as they intersect in public spaces, tho the insufferable powers that be breed their plots behind our backs, thinking us witless… ~David Rivard, Common I recently stumbled upon an oasis of sanity in the midst of masking […]
October 4, 2021 By email ~ Dr. Peebles through Natalie Gianelli ~ NatalieGianelli.com A note from Natalie… Greetings Beautiful Souls, For more than a year, we have been on some version of lock-down. Our dreams and plans were seemingly consigned to the back burner. It was a time-out that gave us an opportunity to feel […]
October 3, 2021 When despair grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the […]
October 1, 2021 …Oh nothing holds. Just the rattling of the going and coming together of things, as if matter itself is trying to find something true to say—crazed investigation, tentative prophecy… Is this the last war now, finally… ~Jorie Graham, Scarcely There I have a confession to make. I kind of overstocked the […]
September 26, 2021 Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks… You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe That you have something impossible up your sleeve, The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak… The will to do whatever must be done… ~A.E. Stallings, Fairy-tale Logic It’s amazing how stating my […]
September 23, 2021 It’s like so many other things in life to which you must say no or yes… And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life is delivered, even though you can’t read the address. ~Thomas R. Smith, Trust What a weird tightrope we are all walking these days. Unless it’s just me, […]
September 22, 2021 Sweet is it, sweet is it To sleep in the coolness Of snug unawareness. ~Gwendolyn Brooks, Truth If I were a “normie,” and not ready for someone else’s version of truth, what would I do when confronted with certain unpalatable facts? If, however, I were even a smidge open to hearing […]
September 20, 2021 …Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn… Let it come, as it will, and don’t be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come. ~Jane Kenyon, Let Evening Come Every time I think I’m at a saturation point, I go back and dip my […]
