Last week Susan Fish taught me the word "wrack line." And today I found this: 365 days of drawing of things washed up on a beach. I am having one of those moments when you shudder right at the edge of creating something....

Do not be surprised if I manage to get "wrack line" worked into the Big Weird Poem in the next week.  I feel as if it is the ( Read more... )

I wrote another piece today for the oracle poems, answering the question "what is home?" It mentions puppies and the constellation Orion. I wish I could post it here, but I've decided I'm going to try to put these poems in for the CBC literary award. The CBC folks require unpublished work, and have a startlingly sweeping definition of "published ( Read more... )

(Yes, I am reposting this, verbatim.  It was up originally in January.  But I'm in the mood to play with these again and too tired to come up with another project description.)

It's traditional, on writers' websites such as this one, to provide one's readers with the odd writing prompt, by way of public service, just to get ye olde writing juices ( Read more... )

What is the nature of dreams?

The morning glory
puts forth its tendrils,
arabesque, delicate
as one bright hair
across an infant cheek:
they can kill a tree.
Strange stones crop from earth.
And what you take for stone --
eyelid-colored, smooth as long weather --
A mourning dove roos in the shadows.

Go back to this post or follow the tag to see more of this ( Read more... )

What do we hope for?

For hope itself, honey
at the bottom of bitter tea. 
Though hope keeps us pulling loads
that would break the heart of horses. 
Straining lifeboat eyes
for the white curl
that could be either sail
or wave.

The crazy little-poems-that-answer-big-questions project continues.  (It's officially called "Too Strong to Stop, Too Sweet to Lose," and you can follow it with the tag.)   And I still need questions: toss me one in the comments!  I will forward it to the oracle, who will make indefensible statements and strange crabbed lists.  The oracle assumes ( Read more... )

What's bred in the bone?

Bone, charred, is what takes sugar
from raw to white. 
That ash at the bottom of every sweetness.
That sweetness at the bottom of every ash. 

What's written in waves?

The sea, with its hiss and hush,
its ragged sleeve of salt,
is surely time.  It is marking
and erasing.  It is building
above the tide line
and watching the tide line change.

The oracle is still taking your questions!

What's written in stone

We think of laws and chisels,
but the stone's true language
is softness:  the round vowels
of a river's mumble, the long oval
cavities of bones.  A fossil can remember
the color of feathers.  After millions of years
the dimples of a summer rain.

The oracle thanks the anonymous commentor who submitted this question.  Who are you?  I ( Read more... )

The bread, innocently,
in the warm kitchen.
Even if the phone rings,
even if you fold to the floor
in grief.
The fever.
The lark song in the evening.

Thanks to everyone who supplied questions for the oracle.  The oracle doesn't know where you put your keys, but is working on some other answers.

I'm adding a tag to these posts in the hopes that there ( Read more... )