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a rose in July 
begs the question:
what are the ingredients
to survive this 
brutal world, 
to continue on 
breathing and living
while the oil fields
expand like a hoop skirt,
while the miners 
burrow down deeper 
into the cut --
what's really needed
on the packing list
to la la land, and 
what promises
to simply weigh me down?

am i just another
japanese beetle
skeletonizing these
leafy groves?
am i too invasive,
too out of control?
send in the invisible nematodes 
to stem the wormy grubs,
to harness actions 
of what I do but
do not know!

it's so hot out.
too hot to walk 
the dogs i've chose
to parent. 
too hot to sit still 
under the maple 
and listen,
take in the natural
speed of things.
too hot to prune
the boxwoods,
to scatter sunflowers seeds,
to walk from 
where I am now 
to where I need to go.
too bright, too sunny
to stop along
the way 
flick off the shelled pest, 
and smell 
the Easy Spirit™ Floribunda.

“In his second term, President Trump has taken action to remove protections from more than 86 million acres of public lands, threatening beloved landscapes and wildlife across the country.” — American Progress Magazine

because of dead winds,
a haze hangs on
the morning after
like a waking dream.
at nature's insistence,
residue becomes 
beauty, regardless of 
the night's war echoes.
police pulled one
heartsick doggie
from a well--
others simply exit 
the trap of hearing
into this strange
semi-silence 
/a single robin cries/
/train calls at the crossing/
sniffing between
blades of grass,
surprised, maybe,
to find 
anything still standing--
what trauma grows
in the bones, then,
anyway,
pads across
the yard in wonder:
eats its kibble.
laps at its reflection
in the water bowl.
sighs and
curls
all it has --
a body with
ears lifted --
in the fall of 
the milky sun.

Fireworks are more than legal in Missouri: they are revered and loved and go long into the night on every cul de sac.

Except by pets, wildlife, and veterans with PTSD.

How is your summer going? Tell me one or two things that you have been doing that have inspired you or shown you beauty this summer. Thanks!

Hey you!

I’ve had a blog since blogs were all on Blogger. That was definitely a long time ago, even if it wasn’t the 1900s! That was before the internet was overflowing and before SEO existed and before journalism was dead.

Back then I simply wrote “letters” to folks back home, paired with some pics from around London. It was literally a “web-log,” which is where the word “blog” came from, in case you didn’t know. Or knew, but forgot.

Then we moved back to the States and we got kids and I planned on sharing some of that journey with folks on my “new and improved” blog on Wordpress. The blog name changed, because we didn’t live in London anymore. It was still “letters” and often it had nothing to do with the kids, because as foster parents, we really couldn’t share much info about them. And the adoption ended up taking about 3+ years longer than expected. It started to shift to the themes I love to write about: culture, angst and love.

Eventually “Letters from a Small State” morphed again, as we moved from CT to KC. And it remains the name I love best: “Letters from Home.” In the latter “small state” format and my letters from home, I started really solidify themes of love, humanity and art in my essays. And there was more poetry.

It wasn’t until I joined the Writers’ Workshop of Kansas City (now ) in person for awhile, and then on Zoom, just before COVID, that started to shift to poetry in earnest. I had a short stint with a paid online poetry/photography column in Connecticut and found that my little at-home distractions created a ripe atmosphere for short-form writing.

Additionally, I seemed to be finding many opportunities to collect vivid mental anecdotes and photos. I created visual haiku which I shared on Instagram.

The Zed Review came about because I love email and letters, and Substack was doing it pretty well at the time.

Substack emerged during a time when stand-alone blogs were waning and the power of email newsletters was being realized.

As a marketing person, I know that email is where it’s at. That and texting, but still mostly email.

Substack started as strictly email. It was pretty cool and simple. And they encouraged writers to create their own little following — with the promise that with only a handful (1000??) folks paying you five bucks a month could get you earning a reasonable wage annually. All from your desk at home!

Eventually, Substack succumbed to the lure of becoming a SOCIAL MEDIA PLACE by creating “Notes” as a little “fun add-on” (my 🙄 emphasis). Exactly what no one needs is more social media, doom scrolling, and oddly non-connecting human connection.

Anyhoo, this is my long way of saying: I liked the original, free subscriber model. It was a better idea. I get to send you notes, and sometimes you reply. And we all get to read notes from our fave writers, and sometimes they reply to them!

And I hope you enjoy and get a little something out of the writing I share. I hope that it fills a need that Apple News and Twitter and even reading The New York Times can’t.

These letters from home — such as they are (whether poems or screeds or ponderings) are my way of reaching out to you and saying: I’m here. I’m struggling too. I am seriously considering re-taking up roller skating. The world is wild and beautiful and I hope you see it too! Here’s a picture of some clouds!

I have eliminated my paid subscriptions, with the humblest gratitude for those kind, sweet, amazing humans who bought me a coffee every month with their heart and their hard-won earnings for the last 3+ years!

🎉 Did you make it this far? If so, put a 🎉 in the comments to celebrate with me the continuation of this micro-corner of the universe, something that (now) costs you nothing and brings you poetry and cool clouds!

Love you long time.

Peace out darlings,

Zed-o-rama, aka Elizabeth

P.S. You can still buy me a coffee if you want.

Buy Me a Coffee

i am like the clouds:
blowing, changing --
occasionally
just not there.
at times,
you step out to find me
remarkably effervescent:
other days
i'm unrelentlessly 
the worst.

this does not make for
productive life habits,
even though the good
and kind meteorologists
do try to give us
a heads up.
there's no phD 
for me. not even I
know what's to come
with the morning winds.

i use a shared calendar.
i make to-do lists
i try to plan ahead
for the emptier
spaces in my days --
i have a white board
covered with rainbow inky 
big rocks broken down
into bite-sized 
good intentions.

no one blames the clouds
for being scattered.
a misty afternoon 
makes for hearty
naps, especially after 
the unmitigated *success!!* 
of a stretch of sunny days--

if only a human could
embody cool liquid 
refreshment,
the satisfying ahhhhh;
if she could drift on by
tossing shade 
as needed,
could survive off 
the promising thrill
(delicious
shivery thrill) of
a far-off thunder 
maybe, maybe not
on its way.

I am in the middle of a midlife crisis that is really just a later-in-life version of my all-life struggle with my sense of self. Which, in addition to being existentially woeful, now and then finds itself treading in the waters of depression.

I don’t believe there’s any place out here in “social media” that is all that healthy for folks like me who struggle with one’s self-worth and self-esteem. However, writing for the world is something I agreed with myself to do, and so I continue to do it.

Sometimes I am hopefully effervescent. Other times, life feels like a portentous breath of cold air.

I appreciate other makers/writers/artists out there in the world who share their feelings. I don’t know if it is a safe thing to share: ultimately I wonder if me sharing my feelings can seem manipulative. Does sharing one’s occasional/daily sense of shame and existential terror valuable? Is it just a cry for attention?

But then I ask myself, on social media, what isn’t? I do not know. All of it starts to feel very un-real. Some of it feels like filler.

Anyway, the impulse for this poem was thinking about how difficult it has been for me to come to terms with my creative practice.

There’s always this sense that it should be “achieving” some kind of success — monetary, followers, reach, publishing, whatever. And ultimately I feel like this need to succeed puts up a creative roadblock. I do not know how to be creative and also be a person who exists in a “normal,” working world where success and ROI occurs. Yet, when I “feel normal” (sort of “in the flow”) I realize I am doing something that literally makes no money and equates to something my math teacher Mom would define as “frivolous.”

I keep trying to do something useful and meaningful, and, now at age 56, I feel like all I have found is the ultimate recipe for failure in both regards.

In fact, I feel as if the one successful thing I could do is write a timeline of my life and call it: “How to Be a Big Fat Failure as a Writer.” Or maybe to make money and market it better: “10 Things In A Row To Not Do in Order to Be a Writer!”

Why version do you like better?

In case you can’t tell, I use self-deprecation as a way to manifest my depression. Waa-hoo.

Back before we had these supercomputers that we carried around in our pockets everywhere, we used to take photos a different way.

My brother, Mike, and I have both always liked to travel. We’ve both been around the block, from Alcatraz (see above) to London, to Mt. Etna to Australia and New Zealand’s South Island.

It’s challenging to dig up the old picture proof of these trips that were recorded mostly on film, but I have a few. Beyond family trips, we started traveling together now and then in 1989 when I was volunteering in Colorado Springs. Swell big brother that he was, he took us to the Renaissance Festival which was absolutely epic in the 80s, pre-social media. We busted a gut watching Puke and Snot on stage.

My brother’s birthday is coming up and I like to reminisce about the many adventures we have shared. Because despite our various differences of opinions on certain topics that shall remain nameless, I still consider him one of my top favorite people to hang out with.

It’s fun to travel with someone who really gets your weird sense of humor, and it constantly willing to rise to the occasion of it.

It’s fun to, now and then, be the calm one. He and I have similar moody qualities so we get to swap turns being “emotional” and “reasonable.”

In Italy it was fun to watch all the other darkly tanned men talk in Italian at Mike and to watch it bounce off his face. He’d sort of chuckle, shrug and point at me, while I did my best to reply. And watch that get repeated again and again.

It’s fun to travel and spend time with with someone who has literally known me my entire life. There aren’t too many surprises when you have known a person for 50+ years, straight from the basement of the split foyer house on the dead end street where you grew up .

Can Mike be a pain in the booty now and again? uhhhhh YESSS. But that is a genetic trait in my family’s genes, mostly passed down from my mom’s side as far as I can tell. (Hey, some people really like our directness!) We ALL are! That and the tendency for anxiety. Humor and handiness and cholesterol issues seem to come from my dad.

Listen, being in a family like ours is not a guarantee that things are always going to be picnics and volleyball and frozen slush in the shade. We argue. We huff. One time, my mom sent me HAWKEYE tee-shirts for me to wear when I lived in Connecticut because, according to her, I should wear them because “no one on the East Coast would know the difference.” I wEnT To IoWa STatE MOm! I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. She actually PAID SHIPPING for that crap.

hahhah heh heh. heh. breathe. breathe.

I guess at the end of the day I look at the bigger picture. Did I wear the Hawkeye shirts? Hell no. I let my kids do finger paint in them and eventually they ended up either in the rag bag or the giveaway pile. I digress but the point being: it ended making for a good story. And it demonstrates how hard my family tries. They really do.

No one is perfect. I know I am sure not. Everyone fails and we let each other down. I know I have! Just ask my kids! 🤣

My brother Mike is one of the funniest, most generous people I have ever known. He loves to give nice gifts. He loves to host parties. He shows up to events at my house though he is allergic to everything!

What can you do if you don’t agree on everything? What should I do?

I guess I’ve always just enjoyed the parts we do agree on. Which is a lot. It’s was the BnB outside Rome. The sheep shearing south of lake in Queenstown. It was carrots sputum flying at the ren faire, and the backroads and gelato in Sicily, and trying not to lose our eyesight as we watched the total eclipse of the sun in southern Germany. Watching T. Mallie pack her backpack again in total amazement and wonder.

It was those things and neighborhood volleyball and drinking beers at Mary’s on the Fourth of July and spending time together in Iowa with our kiddos.

And a lot more.

Happy birthday Mike. I love you.

every beautiful little thing
will save you:
fill your pockets
with rocks and shells.
fill your notebook
with doodles and
thoughts and 
abstract glimmers.
fill your phone with
sunsets and shadows,
grass blades
and love songs.
every beautiful little thing
made of warm coffee
that wakes you,
wrapped in soft sheets
a bittersweet goodbye 
as you heave off
to start the day.
one soft snore
from a kitty
on the floor,
the low evening
rumble of another
April storm
on its way over.
every little beautiful
thing will save you
with its breath 
on your neck
with a tender
chuckle down the line,
with the light it up
grin when you
walk through the door.
go on and on with 
your gold star 
checkboxes.
keep going:
every beautiful little thing, 
the postcards,
the birdsong, 
the mama singing
in minivan flying by,
the thick whole sound 
of nothing
at 3 a.m. 
how still empty
how still
then, 
a thin slice 
from a barred owl
asking
who cooks
for you.

Poem #4 for National Poetry Month.

it's ok to be happy 
where you are
i tell myself while
scrolling the realtor
listings again. some 
suburban bliss isn't 
a disease one must
provide proof of
vaccination for.
it isn't a quiet place:
chock full of tire
song and siren worries
and morning arguments
between one irritated
lark and a stoner dove.
rain upon rain floods the
creek-cum-drainage ditch
and now tree frogs bellow
from our gutters
surprising even themselves
at the metallic echo's 
volume. 
long stretches the day
into the neighboring 
field, with high voices
caroling over the long grass--
it's ok to stop for long
intervals in the street
and throw the football
with those kids, 
to leave your mail 
in the yard while you
swap stories with the
new neighbors. it's 
ok to pull over
onto the salt and sand
and broken glass 
and idle while 
the sun stains the clouds
behind the water tower--
another long 
moment on a 
long straight road
with the radio 
pumping and 
the windows 
gaping so 
the music
can go out
and fly free 

Poem 3 for National Poetry Month.

I’m reading my poetry at Bridge Street Books in Humboldt KS on May 2nd with ! I hope you can come if you are in the area.

—Mark Nepo

I caught snippets of the
conversation, if one
could call it that.
A woman's eyes 
unfocused and staring
as she spits out 
condemnation
through her mask 
over the cold dead
breakfast plates.
Bacon hardens,
Eggs sags.
Two pillars of salt
wonder how
to escape the 
pleather bench seat 
prison -- blink blink
fidget as the
self-proclaimed
prophet hurls
mudpies of advice,  
arrows of warning
into the space
between.
Time undoes
its belt buckle,
lets its heaving
belly out over
the waistband.
"You'll never 
know what they
did to me, how
they made me
the way that I am,
how they ..."
Torrent of blame
fills the crevices
surges the seams, 
pulls down 
the shades,
dousing the room 
in dim damp
residual rage.
"I did everything
for them everything
I could, but what
else could I
do?" Sentences
loop and flutter 
back from her
lips like cassette
ribbon blowing
on the pavement.
We're closing up 
the waitress
interrupts,
cutting into 
the recording,
snapping the
spell. Peeling 
herself like 
a bandaid from
the booth,
the woman insists
"I've got this,"
leaving the
disintegrating 
piles of salt 
to straighten
the mess, 
to sort out the tip. 

Mark Nepo’s quote above is about how our viewpoint, our emotional state, our prejudices impact the way we live, act, think and more.

How do you help yourself see the world more clearly?

I make the coffee in the evening 
before bed, knocking out
the old grounds 
into the compost
filling the reservoir, 
measuring the beans, 
grinding and dumping into 
the rinsed basket. 
I ready-set the roast
for tomorrow's waking,
anticipating a wish 
that less time
separates me 
from the steam, 
from the scent,
from the milky swirl and
the promise in a
yet unmarred day, 
from that perfect
slice of hour
before 
notifications drop 
like marbles 
on the hardwood 
and 
the day gets away.
I tape one bite-sized
chore to the edge
of evening
to remove 
morning's 
tripwire, its
internal groan.
I make coffee 
before reading and
climbing under
the sheets
like a relieved sigh.

*note: sometimes Colin makes the coffee. We take turns.

Every year in the run up to April 1, I have many thoughts for what my plan should be for National Poetry Month.

This is akin to the month prior, in the run up to National Women’s Month, when I try to decide how to celebrate my women-ness with something super womanly to acknowledge how great women can be!

To be honest, even though I love poetry and always have, I have doubts about whether those who don’t dig poetry ever will. It’s ok. Not everyone likes liver and onions either!

Like, so, I am not sure what is supposed to be “going down” during National Poetry Month that isn’t already happening all the time: poets writing poems for the people who like and appreciate poetry.

Regardless, in past years I have set myself 30 day challenges and have cranked out some really interesting poems (and a few real clinkers!).

Even though I am pretty dang outgoing as a “person”, I, like most writers I know, do most of my writing in quiet and solitude. I would go so far as to say that I am an “introvert” when it comes to writing. You might not believe this but I struggle to talk about it, I don’t like to share my published work, and I find it terrifying to to even read in public! All which is weirdly against my usual nature!

So I am sharing with you my plans for National Poetry Month, anyway, because this year I’ll be over here mostly doing things in my office. Here they are:

1. Collection. I working on collecting all the poems I’ve written and put them in one place. This might sound easy, but so far past attempts has led me to great distraction and failure! They are all over the place! I have some typed on typewriter and only have photos of those! Some are in notebooks from 8th grade! Some are in Day One and some are on an old hard drive, and many are on disparate blogs.
   
   I plan to print them out and put them into a binder. But ultimately I will also keep them digitized on the cloud with their closest original writing date.

2. Writing. I am going to write some new poems for you here on Substack. You may have noticed that I don’t write consistently on the Zed Review. This is part of my nature and past (bad?) habits in blogging. I am going to try to have a better calendar of posting. Wish me luck!

3. Contemplation. I have taken up the great habit of writing in my journal again. This month I am reflecting on what is the next “thing” for me. As I have been transitioning away from digital marketing, I know there is something new for me around the corner. What is it? Why can’t a cool, pretty bird just deliver it to me in a fancy envelope, ffs?

4. Photos. I used to take lots of photos. In the last couple of years (excepting my time at the garden center), this has really fallen off. I want to explore why and try to take more pics. I think this has something to do with living on a cul de sac in a suburb and feeling stuck!

That’s my plan for the next 30 days.

Do you like to make “big rock” plans for your upcoming months? How does that go for you, in writing or other life plans?

we need to ask more women
how to get from here to there,
because this bs mapquest route
is a long long road to nowhere 
with untrained
monkeys at the wheel.
historically, though,
we don't listen to her
do we? our mothers
who had the wherewithal
to carry us, to follow us
each and every step,
keep the careful eye,
who pulled back the 
dirt to drop the 
seeds, to nurture the
plant that feeds the 
universe, who washed
the glass to improve
the view, who darned
the socks to make them
new, who broke up the 
long hours into
chewable bites, who
scooped the vomit
and stayed up all night,
rocking and rocking
in bleary-eyed wonder 
as dawn moved to day 
waiting for the 
fever to stay its progress.
no, we don't listen to her
but lay blanket upon layer 
of blame on the ones
who carried the water,
who bandaged the
wounds, who pushed 
back the strays, who 
kept eyes wide open 
while we slept
who stood like an
oak against  
unneighborly winds,
supplying the shade,
cooling the waters,
digging down deep,
sturdy, solid, stuck in 
as her song 
murmurs from
the limbs.

Who are the women you celebrate and admire as we travel together on this long long road to nowhere? Name them in the comments!

Leave a comment

A few of mine:

Author . Her book Cowboys Are My Weakness gave me a lot of permission I hadn’t heard elsewhere. Similar to writers and Alice Walker.

I am a big fan of my sisters, Kathy, Mary, and Ann. And my daughters and cousins!

I admire my fellow writer , with her brave brave writing and community making

Writer-supporters and are both big warm helps to any writer out there. <3

My mom of course, who did the hard work of raising 6 kids while being a teacher, and wife, and sister, and daughter.

My friend Sally, my friend Bonnie, my friend Cynthia, my friend Tammy, my friend Lane! Hospice workers, nurses, wellness workers, realtors, mental health workers! All the women and folks who identify as women in my writing and art groups and show up to say yes to more of this!

So many great women doing the hard real work of love and community building and human caring, besides all the other hard and good work they do.

XOXO

i may find myself laying back 
after awhile, after a hank 
of hours laboring, thinking 
maybe i'll read a chapter, 
and in that repose my 
eyelids dip, my 
head tilts, thoughts 
break apart and dissolve 
into a loose dark. 
for a little while,
some kind of while, 
i am nothing and no one, 
latent, in a warm goo 
unneeded, unheeded, 
unconcerned 'til 
light bleeds through.
time soaked and heavy 
i am in my old school or 
a green field or 
his familiar embrace,
wrapped and pulsing 
tremors, in tender swoon--
then: sharp alien jangle
stabs the languid air --
mom are you awake 
i drag myself up 
out from the mist,
from the deep,
squinting, and 
tap out a yes, 
my unwilling assent.
am i shattered on
the pillow, a little
broken from the corporeal or 
unharnessed and racing
back to a fading dream wish?
epochs may pass before 
i know what rest is
and how to feel 
in repair.

I have very vivid dreams and I remember them almost daily. They stay with throughout the day. Before I was a parent I slept 8 hours a night and rarely napped. Since parenting, and now in menopause, I have interrupted sleep at night and frequently feel the need to nap during the day.

Below is Buddy the cat in one of his luxurious nap poses. Our kids were also champion nappers.

The science says napping isn’t great for you except 15 minute intervals. I am not sure how I feel about that. What about you?

Leave a comment

I have another online home where I have been writing posts, and some poetry, since 2005.

It started as “Letters from London, and Elsewhere” then became “Letters from a Small State.” Then and finally I shift it to “Letters from Home: Culture. Angst. Love.”

Home has been a through-message and consideration in many pieces I have written. First, because I felt displaced living overseas, and as a Midwesterner living in New England. But also (and especially) as I explored the idea more and more, because I came to realize that finding one’s home and feeling at home was a journey of the heart and of a lifetime.

One poem I have doing the rounds at the moment says:

here's something you don't learn 
‘til you leave: home is not 

a fixed property with an address. 
home don't stay. 

I remember thinking at some point after I left home how wild it was that my parents had stayed all that time in the same neighborhood with the same friends all those years. But how nice it was to have one home as a kid to look back on as our growing up place.

Later, when I had kids and we considered moving away, I wondered whether I was being selfish. Shouldn’t I, too, stay in that big white house that they came home to? I still wonder what is behind that sliding door life for each of us.

The wide open spaces of the Midwest are the closest thing to creature comfort for me. Though the wide arms of a shade tree and the beauty of a New England autumn are beyond compare, there is no place that settles my soul more than the view from the passenger seat of the sky and the passing fields.

I’ve written already quite a bit about home on that blog I used to call home:

the shifting mood of my mind as I try to settle on one idea of it;
how I often feel unsettled and want to leave;
the island where my mom is still alive;
what happens to a home when we cut down a tree;
an ode to living in america in 2020;
why we love kids so much, and not grown ups

Going back and reading these old posts, I find myself amazed sometimes at the turns and twists of the writing. I also wonder why didn’t I say more? Why didn’t I stay with it a little longer.

It always seems like there is so much more to say. But the silence and the space between is nice too.

I have a lot of photos like this one: empty or mostly empty roads in flat spaces with the sky dominating. This photo is in Iowa heading north towards Wisconsin.

When we traveled to Vancouver in 2023 to visit Colin’s family and celebrate the twins graduation, it was the first time I experienced a sense of awe greater than I do when I am traveling in the Midwest. The size of the empty landscape filled my mind.

I know how uninhabited Canada is compared to the US, even compared to the Midwest. It’s scope and vastness made me grow quiet many times. I was glad to be there in summer and could not imagine how challenging life could be in most of Canada in winter.

Finding one’s place in the world isn’t easy. There are so many choices: the place, the vibe, the neighbors. How close to be to our families or how far away. The speed, the amenities, the simple nature of the place.

And for some staying put is the only choice. Maybe home doesn’t exist beyond the mind and the present moment.

In Alfred de Musset’s play Fantasio, the bored court jester finds himself imprisoned for insulting the court. While locked up and facing spacial limitations, her reflects:

In home perhaps we are looking for each our own place, often alongside someone else, alongside the needs of our spouse, our families, our children. In the looking, maybe the last thought we give is to that great internal landscape and where it fits into the square footage of our houses, our towns, and our lives.

I am not sure. I only know it seems as though, through observation, some of the best and loveliest people I know have a warm and anchored sense of self that guides them in their actions and in their rest.

Surely they too have had their people-pleasing seasons and their selfish days. But in passing through, they decided it is best to cast out of the wagon the weight of expectations and external affirmation.

Maybe the road ahead gets wider and clearer and easier to see? Or maybe it just gets easier to worry less about what is around the bend.

god won't forgive us for the roadkill.
one cast off body 
after another on I-49
north of springfield.
a buffet of species
they are not sleeping.
they got knocked hard
off their hooves 
into the verge, 
guts smeared, tongues
lolling. no.
god won't forgive us for
throwing down our blanket 
of prioritized systems 
over perfect little lives,
pouring blacktop over
the prairie grasses, 
dumping glyphosate
into the crystal springs.
he won't say
oh don't worry about it
it was just a dumb turtle
just a smelly skunk 
just another dopey armadillo:
we got plenty.
he won't say
you know you're right 
there really are
too dang many deer 
this season and anyway, 
those ticks are such 
a problem, for you.
my bad.
god doesn't drive 
a Jeep Wrangler, doesn't 
haul trailers full of
flip-flops and 
polyester shorts
by headlight
from China to 
Charleston.
he didn't pave
anything when
he stirred up the
Milky Way,
when he dropped
cherry blossom petals 
into the heart
of the first 
vernal garden --

I spent some time recently in Arkansas and observed an abundance of roadkill on the highway, more than I’ve ever seen in one trip before. I don’t think I will ever get numb to seeing dead bodies on the side of the road.

the shortest distance to 
heaven may be up 
this loblolly, shooting 
straight up to 
the blue sky from the 
ozark dirt. meanwhile
you and me,
we take the long way, 
switchback meandering,
blasting out the
winding roads
from unyielding
stone, searching for 
the shallowest
crossings. 

silence isn't even 
silent. open the door
a sliver and you'll
hear the hum of 
any old day:  
sapsucker hammering,
squirrels skittering 
in dead leaves, 
murmur of
rubber coming 
and going
this way.
rat  tat   tat
tumble of
loose coin 
in the dryer.

life keeps
peeping over 
the hills, 
in the reaching sunrays,
in the treacle woodsmoke,
in kettles of vultures 
soaring on thermals,
with sips of 
candied clues:
this is the day
this is the moment
this is the way.

A poem from Dairy Hollow, Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

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i wanted to write something
to inspire you, on my birthday
to mark the turn of my year, but 
i've got nothing. 
though my cup is full 
and my life is good, 
dissociation permeates
this external world:
what are we supposed to do!
how are we supposed to be
in this day-to-day mêleé!
let me distract us
with leaves of gratitude: 
the wide arc of the sky above,
soft yellow grasses-in-waiting 
as winter wanes, 
the bite of the air holding 
spring at bay while the wind, 
the wind, the wind rushes
headlong through the limbs.
one after another,
warm thoughts ping
from folks near and
and far far away, LA and 
London and Monterey,
while stories unfold 
in bits and breaths 
from strangers over
coffee steam and 
bites of bread.
the road and time bends 
to the ear of music made 
like magic by a fairy prince 
in denim, strings and brass band:
how to be transported
to multiple places
at once. all of it 
a long scroll rolling out
and away, things to 
ponder and count 
while walking on repeat
these cul de sacs,
suburban thought bubbles, 
Penny dragging me on,
another hour 
another season 
another sweet year.

Like the sun rising, and the seasons passing by, let’s let hope spring eternal.

I am only writing this poem
because I am supposed to,
because this is my job,
the way garbage collectors
show up in 0 degrees
on time on Tuesday to throw
away the flotsam of life, 
the way teachers drag 
themselves into classrooms 
every weekday and drag out 
their smiles, even though 
they can't sleep and parents
keep emailing
why did you teach this and
why can't my kid read yet. 
anxiety is a waterfall
2,509 tons of 
pressure crushing 
the senses,
shoving the boat,
little beings trying 
to stand, trying to see,
trying to collect a shred
of awe, to catch their
breaths, huddling 
inside their thin blue 
flies, broken laughs
forming a wheeze.
anxiety is a dam,
cold hard coffin
built by unseen
hands and
dropped down 
into darkness, 
full of ideas 

Thanks for reading. It continues to be a rough time. For me, processing the stress and pain of these times is a very personal experience, internal. It’s not something I share much with my friend and family (except maybe through memes on my IG story).

I have zero answers to anything. Keep pushing love, as Al Green would say. One of my favorite songs right now is Patty Griffin’s “Love Throws a Line”. Also, keep making art, and supporting artists, and keep checking in your friends and family.

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