On this last day of the year, my 39th on this planet, I want to take several moments to reflect on where I’ve been this year and maybe years past. Maybe at the end of this little jaunt, I’ll think about where I’m headed and many more us seem to be headed. The short version: … More From the last year to the new year
I’m working on a novel, tentatively titled Rise. It takes place over the course of 26 hours, largely in one place. Each chapter focuses on a different character. In this chapter, I’ve written from the perspective of an adult female black bear who sees a wildfire that’s started in the chapter before. This is the … More 1:12 pm Black Bear – A chapter draft from my novel, Rise.
Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day. So what’s in my pocket? “A Stone,” a poem I’ve been working on since last summer. A single stone can seem at once to be just itself while also being the story of its place. They are beautiful metaphors for the events of our lives. Stones are the poetry of … More Stones are the #poetry of experience
This winter, snow has been our regular companion in Pennsylvania. It has been years since we have had snow on the ground for this long. Just a few years ago, we had July in March. Last year it was warm and wet. This morning, I sat writing my dissertation, Memories of Awakening, and gazed out … More Voices in the snow
“Scotia: A Paean to Iron and the Barrens” I’ve walked near ruins in December. They look as though the heavy concrete should give with each gust of wind. They should creak, moan, groan and groan like uncles who lost legs in the war. But they don’t. They stand, lonesome watchers who lost their eyes when … More Scotia: A Paean to Iron and the Barrens
“Heartwood” An old sycamore tree slid when the river bank quit.The slope liquefied into muddy fleshin the ’13 flash flood. One mighty mottled branch drifted on the river over stones lain over with stories not even they remember. A quiet man with hard hands sat on a sheet rock where the branch rested shy of … More Heartwood: A #poem
“Like the surface tension” Perched on her toes she watched liquid ribbons stream over silt and slate. Her fingers met the run’s meniscus, forming spandrels round her fingers’ tips. I know her touch among browning leaves falling from tulips and sycamores, feeling like the surface tension surrendering to her touch.
The last poem I posted, “The Omega Rite,” is something of this poem’s inverse twin. Their structures and themes come from the same place but move in almost opposite directions before meeting again. They are, then, the alpha and the omega of the poems I’ve written over the last year’s project, encompassing their themes and … More The Alpha Rite: See the end at the beginning and the beginning at the end
“The Omega Rite” The creation stretches its fingers to penits dicta in no uncertain terms: This is the end. There is noend. This is the beginning. There is nobeginning. You will see. But you will notsee it unless youseeitwritten. See it.Read it. Read … More The Omega Rite: A poem on the beginning as the end and the end as the beginning
“By the Pond” A mallard duckling nestledagainst her mother’s downy breast here, among the reeds tiltingdry and crisp with the wind whispering into her carcass, her loss-notched bonesthat surrendered their heat this autumn. She became the boon of fox who stalkssnow-shouldered hemlocks at dusk.
Peter Walks for Democracy 