Listenwith the night falling we are saying thank you from “Thanks,” by W.S. Merwin I first learned about the origins of Thanksgiving in 2011, when I happened to be working on Thanksgiving Day. Of course, I’d heard the same story as every American kid in elementary school, about the brave pilgrims and the generous Native…
Tag: poetry
Green Lake {Psalm 104}
For the past year or so, I have been volunteering with my church’s Ancient Paths ministry, a program that seeks to bring people to greater wholeness in Christ through spiritual disciplines and time spent in the wilderness. This poem was an assignment set to us a few months ago, when we were asked to write…
Of Braiding Hair and the Privilege of Worry
It is what would have been Breonna Taylor‘s 27th birthday, and I am braiding my daughter’s hair when I am struck for a moment with the desire to write a poem about braiding hair. I think about braids around the world, braids throughout history, different colors and textures of hair plaited together in different sizes…
Home Is Where We Start From
Three days into spring break, I find myself on a windy hilltop, alone and reading poetry. At my back is the high outer wall of Rodborough Fort, a well-kept castle of indeterminate history or function, not open to the public but apparently available to lease. I text Timmy a picture of the castle and the…
{The Love Song Of} 2 & 33
I owe a lot to T.S. Eliot and Taylor Swift for these lines, composed on a walk today with Luci. I’m emulating another favorite, Billy Collins, master of the birthday poem. It was a poetic day, rich and splendid, worth sharing. Let us go then, you and me, where the autumn blazes bright…
#Vanlife, Real Life and Roads {Taken and Not}
Oh I kept the first for another day! But knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. Robert Frost, from “Road Not Taken” A few weeks ago I taught Robert Frost’s “Road Not Taken” to my class of juniors. It went predictably, a conversation that I’ve had every…
Windowsill
Compared to a handful of brilliant students and colleagues, I write poetry with neither frequency nor remarkable talent. Still, sometimes, every other year or so, it happens. Because sometimes prose would take too long, and there are moments that require only a few words, written over and over again. This week has elicited many moments…
Hearing The Bells
I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along The unbroken song Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Till, ringing, singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, A chant sublime Of peace on earth, good-will to men! “Hey, this is a song!” I hear it half a dozen times as the eleventh-graders walk into class and pick up today’s reading, Longfellow’s “Christmas Bells.” “‘I heard the bells on Christmas Day,’” the first student reads aloud, then exclaims…
Weight, Wait
I’m a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. from “Metaphors,” Sylvia Plath It’s one of those poems that I have almost memorized by accident, Plath’s “Metaphors,” a “riddle in nine syllables” I’ve set to many classes of eleventh graders. “What is she talking about?” I’ll ask them,…
East
Five years ago, I left the Pacific Northwest. I was alone and excited, seeking adventure and responding to calling on this quest eight thousand miles east. In a few weeks, I’m going back, married and expecting a baby, but with the same sense of calling and adventure as I retrace my steps back to the…
The Way Home 