- Don’t wait another minuteJuly 2024 Wage peace with your breath.Breathe in firemen and rubble,breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and fresh mownfields.Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.Remember your …
- where I am falling from or toJune 2024 Because These Failures Are My JobThis morning I failed to notice the pearl-gray momentjust before sunrise when everything lightens;failed also to find bird song under the grinding of garbage trucks,and later, walking through woods, to stop thinking, thinking,for even five consecutive steps. Then there was the failure to namethe exact shade of blue …
- the same kind of mercyMay 2024 She asks me to kill the spider.Instead, I get the mostpeaceful weapons I can find.I take a cup and a napkin.I catch the spider, put it outsideand allow it to walk away.If I am ever caught in the wrong placeat the wrong time, just being aliveand not bothering anyone,I hope I am greetedwith …
- Wage PeaceApril 2024 “Wage Peace” Wage peace with your breath.Breathe in firemen and rubble,breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and fresh mownfields.Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray …
- there is a light somewhereMarch 2024 The Laughing Heartyour life is your lifedon’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.be on the watch.there are ways out.there is a light somewhere.it may not be much light butit beats the darkness.be on the watch.the gods will offer you chances.know them.take them.you can’t beat death butyou can beat death in life, sometimes.and …
- coming for to carry me hereFebruary 2024 Poem in Thanks Lord Whoever, thank you for this air I’m about to in- and exhale, this hutch in the woods, the wood for fire, the light — both lamp and the natural stuff of leaf-black, fern, and wing. For the piano, the shovel for ashes, the moth-gnawed blankets, the stone-cold water stone-cold: …
- Lift up your facesJanuary 2024 The Rock Cries Out to Us Today …Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, Need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you… Here on …
- hear blessingsDecember 2024 Last year I admired wines. This year I am wandering inside the red world. Last year I gazed at the fire. This year I am burnt kabob. Thirst drove me down to the water, where I drank the moon’s reflection. Now I am a lion staring up totally lost in love with the …
- the weight you carryNovember 2023 Heavy That time I thought I could not go any closer to grief without dying I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had his hand in this, as well as friends. Still, I was bent, and my laughter, as the poet said, was nowhere to be found. Then said my …
- loving in betweenFolks, I’m telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean — so get yourself a little loving in between. — Langston Hughes
- a self is a selfSeptember 2023 The Ideal This is where I came from. I passed this way. This should not be shameful or hard to say. A self is a self. It is not a screen. A person should respect what he has been. This is my past which I shall not discard. This is the ideal. This …
- The Guest HouseAugust 2023 The Guest House This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each …
- that’s why we wake and look outJuly 2023 Yes It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen. Or sunshine, love, salvation. It could, you know. That’s why we wake and look out — no guarantees in this life. But some bonuses, like morning, like right now, like noon, like evening. –William Stafford
- We’re only haunted by the things we refuse to acceptJune 2023 we’re only haunted by the things we refuse to accept -Bridgett Devoue
- I love you, San Diego
- thank you universeMay 2023 through iphone
- and there was a new voiceMay 2023 The Journey One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice — though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew …
- rebirthApril 2023 there will be moments when you will bloom fully and then wilt, only to bloom again. if we can learn anything from flowers it is that resilience is born even when we feel like we are dying. -Alex Elle
- Florida poemMarch 2023
- to a place we’ve never been beforeMarch 2023 Dedicated to Dorothy, Evan, and Cameron, three I loved who left us …Change, like the sky like the leaves, like a butterfly Death, like a door To a place we’ve never been before Would you live forever, never die while everything around you passes? Would you smile forever, never cry? Big Thief, “Change” …
- don’t hesitateFebruary 2023 If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of …
- which is all I knowJanuary 2023 …And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope. I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is. I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned, I have become younger. And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know? Love yourself. …
- open your hands if you want to be heldDecember 2022 A Community of the Spirit by Rumi There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street and being the noise. Drink all your passion and be a disgrace. Close both eyes to see with the other eye. Open your hands if you want …
- taking the world into my armsNovember 2022 When Death Comes When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps his purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when death comes like an iceburg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through …
- it could have been otherwiseOctober 2022 Otherwise I got out of bed on two strong legs. It might have been otherwise. I ate cereal, sweet milk, ripe, flawless peach. It might have been otherwise. I took the dog uphill to the birch wood. All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. …
- what you missedSeptember 2022 What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark After lunch …
- and this old world is a new worldBuffalo’s west side, August 2022 “Dragonfly out in the sun, you know what I mean, don’t you know Butterflies all havin’ fun, you know what I mean Sleep in peace when day is done, that’s what I mean And this old world is a new world And a bold world For me, for me” –Nina …
- the heart crosses itJuly 2022 “The mind creates the abyss. The heart crosses it.” Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
- So I trust, tooJuly 2022 I have seen flowers come in stony places, And kind things done by men with ugly faces, And the gold cup won by the worst horse at the races, So I trust, too. John Masefield (1878-1967)
- You could make this place beautifulJune 2022 “Good Bones” by Maggie Smith Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I …
- when the heartMay 2022 “When the heart” by Michael Leunig When the heart is cut or cracked or broken Do not clutch it Let the wound lie open Let the wind from the good old seas blow in To bathe the wound with salt And let it sting Let a stray dog lick it Let a bird …
- dark though it isMay 2022 “Thanks” by W.S. Merwin Listen with the night falling we are saying thank you we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings we are running out of the glass rooms with our mouths full of food to look at the sky and say thank you we are standing by the …
- I will love you, againApril 2022 The Thing Is to love life, to love it evenwhen you have no stomach for itand everything you’ve held dearcrumbles like burnt paper in your hands,your throat filled with the silt of it.When grief sits with you, its tropical heatthickening the air, heavy as watermore fit for gills than lungs;when grief weights you …
- New YorkersNYC April 2022
- like sands through the hourglassMarch 2022
- grace beyond my graspFeb. 2022
- If you like like, you’ll love love
- Let tenderness pour from your eyesJanuary 2022 “Let tenderness pour from your eyes, the way the sun gazes warmly on earth.” Hafez
- heaven and nature singDecember 2021
- A light over my head for youNovember 2021
street photography based in Buffalo, New York by Rachele Schneekloth
