








sometimes the details of life make it hard to breathe,
make it so that my heart feels squeezed and i tell myself to keep it together–
often i feel foolish because it isn’t over heroic acts or poetic words
it isn’t intense emotions over politics or rhetoric or what’s right or what’s wrong with the world–
it’s about a robin eating berries in the snow (why didn’t he migrate?)
and a detail in the railing that made me look twice,
it’s when a man holds his wife’s hand gently and absentmindedly caresses her arm,
it’s the 1968 photo where faces beam with hope and happiness,
and how his goodbye was a little hurried, like ripping off a band-aid and shaking off the sting

in the clear blue morning sky, the crows flew
and their cries carried the day

i like blurry photos
and off-kilter horizons
i like old things and broken things
and abandoned places
i like pack bites from big dogs
and razor teeth on puppies
i like to see vultures in the fields
and crows in the sky
i like the smell of cloves burning
and the hissing sound of tabacco in a pipe
“How can you like that?”
is a sentence i’ve heard many a time–
and always, i like to hear it

some days, i am more alive than others

day dreams
opportunities
sweet secrets
warm homes
good friends
lemon cakes
and cinnamon rolls
red wine
and hot coffee

And I thought, as he reached down to brush the hair from my eyes, the trouble with dreaming is that we eventually wake up.
from The Year of the Monkey, by Patti Smith, 2019

the sun kissing the edges of leaves
walks along the river
this book, Hold Still by Sally Mann
the smell of peony and rose
Johnny Cash singing, Daddy Sang Bass
the Laurel Highlands on a cool, fall morning



Amo, amas, amat, she thought. Amamus, amatis, amant. Their Latin teacher had made them march through the halls chanting conjugations. I love, you love, he, she, or it loves. It loves? That made no sense. We love. You (plural) love. They love. And then, of course, the perfect passive subjunctive – would that I had been loved – the saddest conjugation of them all.
From The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller, 2012

the morning is my favorite time of day,
when the fog lifts and the hopefulness rises