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...

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.

“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

The grace
in letting go

How a leaf
loves the air
as it falls

everybody’s moon

Another in my series of libraries
Stonyhurst College library, Clitheroe
#SomethingBeautiful #LoveLibraries #EveryLibraryMatters #Libraries #Library #LibrarySky #libsky

What a tender and nourishing piece from @mariapopova.bsky.social.

My heart is breaking about so many things, and I also know we must find sustenance in the midst of it as a “a countercultural act of courage and resistance.”

“When you forgive, you are free to move on in life, to grow, to no longer be a victim. When you forgive, you slip the yoke, and your future is unshackled from your past.”

—Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu, “The Book of Forgiving”

I talked with poet and writer Maggie Smith about finding possibility in between-states and the freedom of having your life implode.

Illustration by Harriet Lee-Merrion. @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social @tricyclemag.bsky.social
tricycle.org/article/on-n...

#creativelife #authorinterview

Courage is more exhilarating than fear and in the long run it is easier.
We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appeared, discovering we have the strength to stare it down.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt 🌺

“Curiosity is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.”

—Tom Robbins

We all have to live with ourselves. . .eventually (if not immediately) that truth is meaningful.

“For one to be free there must be at least two.”
― Zygmunt Bauman
#Photography Martin Parr

‘The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.’
~ Carl G. Jung
writingforwellbeing.co.uk

"We need beauty
because
it makes us ache
to be worthy of it."

- Mary Oliver

Artist: Alberta Tiburzi

start small.
let the driver merge,
let the cashier breathe,
let the stranger’s silence mean something
other than indifference.
#poetry #poem #art #digitalart #mentalhealth #compassion

Monday sights

“When we listen with our mind, we understand more of life. When we listen with our heart, we feel more of life. When we listen with our entire being and spirit, we are transformed and joined with life itself.”

—Mark Nepo, “Seven Thousand Ways to Listen”

The poets and the storytellers, holding the powerful history of Juneteenth.

Today's the *official* pub day for Human/Animal: a bestiary in essays @wlupress.bsky.social I will lean into the joy—Celebrate with me!
The brilliant @carolinehagood.bsky.social interviewed me: open.substack.com/pub/caroline...
AND
It was excerpted in @msmagazine.com!
msmagazine.com/2025/04/21/w...

I love it when the evening light comes through the window with an intensity and a tone that says, “beauty emergency” (to borrow Maggie Smith’s phrase)—stop everything and go outside and stare at the sunset.