Toward a World that Works for Everyone
April 4, 2021 Meditating among liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see that there are really no liars or lies after all… And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has preceded it, And that the truth includes all… And henceforth I will go celebrate any thing I see or am, And sing […]
April 2, 2021 I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I’m dead. I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread. ~Langston Hughes, Freedom It feels as if things are opening up. Spring is an opening-up time of year. So hearing […]
April 1, 2021 Baking pies for barn raising day, we pray that no lightning strikes again. ~ Linda Oatman High, Barn Raising Day Listening to “Building the Barn” (from the movie Witness), doing the little dance I always do—an erratic, every-move-is-perfect jig—I ponder the piece’s awkward 5/4 time signature that just can’t be squared up […]
March 23, 2021 Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew… I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph. ~Jack Gilbert, Falling and Flying I am in the strangest space right now. It’s as if ribbons of memory and realities from times past are curling toward […]
March 21, 2021 Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold Molten, graven, hammered and rolled, Heavy to get and light to hold… ~Thomas Hood, Gold! One thing that goodly, kindhearted, generous people seem to have no problem with is giving. Donating. Time, treasure, and talent, as it was described in a […]
March 19, 2021 Fierce-throated beauty! Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night, Thy madly-whistled laughter… Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d, Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes, To the free skies unpent and glad and strong. ~Walt Whitman, To a Locomotive in Winter […]
March 15, 2021 O little feet! that such long years Must wander on through hopes and fears… O little souls! as pure and white And crystalline as rays of light Direct from heaven, their source divine… ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Weariness I drag myself through the days, one stumbling foot after the other. But I […]
March 10, 2021 Maru in Japanese means the ship will make it back home. ~James Masao Mitsui, Spring Poem For the Sake of Breathing, Written After a Walk to Foster Island I keep forgetting to breathe. Not literally, that’s autonomic. But if I pause and take notice I realize that I am barely, barely […]
March 7, 2021 ‘The poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar imagination of disaster. Peace, not only the absence of war.’ But peace…can’t be imagined before it is made… ~Making Peace, Denise Levertov Miraculously, I just had a completely normal conversation with an old friend. I’m still marveling. How […]
February 27, 2021 There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel […]
February 26, 2021 I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. ~ Theodore Roethke, The Waking I’m very fond of the notion that we already know everything. That we can just open up some […]
February 25, 2021 My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring… ~Christina Rossetti I have an Armageddon closet, and no, it isn’t filled with guns. It has five-pound bags of flour, canned beans, soup. Salsa, canned fruit, bags of lentils, oatmeal and […]
February 24, 2021 For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe — should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. ~ William E. Stafford In my view, the only real upside to our enforced […]
February 22, 2021 If pain for peace prepares…~Emily Dickinson In my opinion, I shouldn’t have pain. Or at least, I shouldn’t have pain anymore. I’m speaking of physical pain. The ouch kind. As in, take a step, OUCH. Repeat repeat repeat. That walking pain gets old after a month, a year, several years. I can’t […]
February 20, 2021 Once upon a time, when the world was awash in common sense, courage, and camaraderie, there was pleasure to be had in the ordinary interactions of our lives. A routine trip to Costco could bring joy. “Oh, look! It’s nearly Spring, there are mystery-color iris bulbs in bulk. There are early Easter […]
