Michael Valliant
@mvalliant306.bsky.social
Writer; father; Episcopal Priest; soul adventurer; creative nonfiction; storytelling; mysticism; comics; poetry; skateboarding; trail running; fountain pens, notebooks, life
“It is not our job to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves
Like the trees, and be born again,
Drawing up from the great roots.”
—Robert Bly
We came to lose our leaves
Like the trees, and be born again,
Drawing up from the great roots.”
—Robert Bly
November 25, 2025 at 11:35 AM
“It is not our job to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves
Like the trees, and be born again,
Drawing up from the great roots.”
—Robert Bly
We came to lose our leaves
Like the trees, and be born again,
Drawing up from the great roots.”
—Robert Bly
Reposted by Michael Valliant
today is my birthday, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to celebrate than having a new poem out in Burial Magazine! infinite gratitude to Z. H. Gill for giving this one a beautiful home :) 🙏
November 24, 2025 at 4:11 PM
today is my birthday, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to celebrate than having a new poem out in Burial Magazine! infinite gratitude to Z. H. Gill for giving this one a beautiful home :) 🙏
Reposted by Michael Valliant
one hand opens in grief
the other in gratitude
pressing them together to pray
— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “One on Thanksgiving”
the other in gratitude
pressing them together to pray
— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “One on Thanksgiving”
November 25, 2025 at 1:23 AM
one hand opens in grief
the other in gratitude
pressing them together to pray
— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “One on Thanksgiving”
the other in gratitude
pressing them together to pray
— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, “One on Thanksgiving”
Reposted by Michael Valliant
egret extravaganza
November 15, 2025 at 1:59 PM
egret extravaganza
“Don’t you think it’s odd that we appreciate absurdity?”
“I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.”
“I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.”
November 24, 2025 at 11:03 AM
“Don’t you think it’s odd that we appreciate absurdity?”
“I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.”
“I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life.”
Reposted by Michael Valliant
Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is a perfect novella biblioklept.org/2025/11/23/d...
Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams is a perfect novella
With blunt grace, Denis Johnson navigates the line between realism and the American frontier myth in his perfect novella Train Dreams. In a slim 116 pages, Johnson communicates one man’s life…
biblioklept.org
November 23, 2025 at 10:14 PM
Denis Johnson's Train Dreams is a perfect novella biblioklept.org/2025/11/23/d...
Reposted by Michael Valliant
At the link, this week's oasis of small sanities in one place – how to love the world more, what it's like to meet an orca, how not to be a victim of success: mailchi.mp/themarginali...
November 23, 2025 at 10:16 PM
At the link, this week's oasis of small sanities in one place – how to love the world more, what it's like to meet an orca, how not to be a victim of success: mailchi.mp/themarginali...
Reposted by Michael Valliant
the measurable distance
between poems
one maple leaf falls
then another
one Canada goose calls
then another
one snowflake drifts
then another
one memory arrives
then another
one lifetime
then another
and another
#vss365 #measurable
between poems
one maple leaf falls
then another
one Canada goose calls
then another
one snowflake drifts
then another
one memory arrives
then another
one lifetime
then another
and another
#vss365 #measurable
November 22, 2025 at 11:12 AM
the measurable distance
between poems
one maple leaf falls
then another
one Canada goose calls
then another
one snowflake drifts
then another
one memory arrives
then another
one lifetime
then another
and another
#vss365 #measurable
between poems
one maple leaf falls
then another
one Canada goose calls
then another
one snowflake drifts
then another
one memory arrives
then another
one lifetime
then another
and another
#vss365 #measurable
Reposted by Michael Valliant
“Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of the soul’s passage through the valley of this life, its adventure in time, in history.”
—Stanley Kunitz in conversation with Bill Moyers
—Stanley Kunitz in conversation with Bill Moyers
November 21, 2025 at 9:35 PM
“Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of the soul’s passage through the valley of this life, its adventure in time, in history.”
—Stanley Kunitz in conversation with Bill Moyers
—Stanley Kunitz in conversation with Bill Moyers
Reposted by Michael Valliant
Reposted by Michael Valliant
Excited to have a flash in the beautiful latest issue of The Maine Review.♥️
www.mainereview.com/the-wing/
www.mainereview.com/the-wing/
The Wing - The Maine Review
The morning Nadine’s feathers sprouted, a light snow fell. She was standing outside, watching Meg board the school bus, noticing how the little girl’s hair, frizzy like her own, glistened with snow, m...
www.mainereview.com
November 21, 2025 at 4:42 PM
Excited to have a flash in the beautiful latest issue of The Maine Review.♥️
www.mainereview.com/the-wing/
www.mainereview.com/the-wing/
Reposted by Michael Valliant
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
—T. S. Eliot, from “Four Quartets”
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
—T. S. Eliot, from “Four Quartets”
November 1, 2025 at 12:25 PM
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
—T. S. Eliot, from “Four Quartets”
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
—T. S. Eliot, from “Four Quartets”
Reposted by Michael Valliant
Keats, born 230 years ago today, on the measure of compassion www.themarginalian.org/2019/07/02/k...
Keats on the Measure of Compassion
“The best of Men have… a kind of spiritual yeast in their frames which creates the ferment of existence — by which a Man is propell’d to act and strive and buffet with Circumstance.R…
www.themarginalian.org
November 1, 2025 at 12:01 AM
Keats, born 230 years ago today, on the measure of compassion www.themarginalian.org/2019/07/02/k...
Reposted by Michael Valliant
the hallowed seam
October 31, 2025 at 11:49 AM
the hallowed seam
Reposted by Michael Valliant
“How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the center of the world…
This is what things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the center of the world…
This is what things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
October 28, 2025 at 11:21 AM
“How surely gravity’s law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the center of the world…
This is what things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the smallest thing
and pulls it toward the center of the world…
This is what things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Reposted by Michael Valliant
Many, many warm thanks to Court Harler at Flash the Court for publishing my prose poem "What It Takes, What It Gives." It's had a long journey to here, and I'm so grateful to see it published.
The work that inspired the piece is Lee Krasner's Palingenesis.
flashthecourt.com/2025/10/03/w...
The work that inspired the piece is Lee Krasner's Palingenesis.
flashthecourt.com/2025/10/03/w...
October 3, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Many, many warm thanks to Court Harler at Flash the Court for publishing my prose poem "What It Takes, What It Gives." It's had a long journey to here, and I'm so grateful to see it published.
The work that inspired the piece is Lee Krasner's Palingenesis.
flashthecourt.com/2025/10/03/w...
The work that inspired the piece is Lee Krasner's Palingenesis.
flashthecourt.com/2025/10/03/w...
Reposted by Michael Valliant
be not afraid. focus instead on the bright day coming, when all will be returned to a way long before. the atomic love is all. it causes the wind to blow, the flowers to lean towards the sun. it is the sound of the waves whispering to the shore.
October 10, 2025 at 8:36 AM
be not afraid. focus instead on the bright day coming, when all will be returned to a way long before. the atomic love is all. it causes the wind to blow, the flowers to lean towards the sun. it is the sound of the waves whispering to the shore.
Yesterday I was handed a perfect fall leaf, deep red and wonderfully shaped—shared because we love and appreciate these things and the moments and wonder they give us.
Holding a gifted fall leaf up to the setting sun is its own prayer of thanks and wow.
Holding a gifted fall leaf up to the setting sun is its own prayer of thanks and wow.
October 10, 2025 at 8:39 AM
Yesterday I was handed a perfect fall leaf, deep red and wonderfully shaped—shared because we love and appreciate these things and the moments and wonder they give us.
Holding a gifted fall leaf up to the setting sun is its own prayer of thanks and wow.
Holding a gifted fall leaf up to the setting sun is its own prayer of thanks and wow.
Reposted by Michael Valliant
“I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
October 10, 2025 at 4:33 AM
“I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me. I am arch, gay, languid, melancholy by turns. I am rooted, but I flow.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Reposted by Michael Valliant
The grace
in letting go
How a leaf
loves the air
as it falls
in letting go
How a leaf
loves the air
as it falls
August 13, 2025 at 2:12 PM
The grace
in letting go
How a leaf
loves the air
as it falls
in letting go
How a leaf
loves the air
as it falls