writing : blog
This is the last day of National Poetry Month, celebrated by a poem almost every day here on 37days. Poets take us places, juxtapose what doesn't fit to let us see differently, open up a world of imagination and experience we connect to, tell us truths. And as we close out our celebration of all that poetry brings us,…
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Overlook the fact that my head looks rather, well, enormous. I'm sure it was just the camera angle. [With thanks to Kathryn Schuth for making this particular dream a reality]
Traveling through the Dark Traveling through the dark I found a deerdead on the edge of the Wilson River road.It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead. By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the carand stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;she had stiffened…
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to an Iraqi poet while i am shown generals on CNN doing comic shtick to the video images sent back from weapons smarter than them they would have me believe you have jars of mustard gas fermenting in your cellar petri dishes of black jello ripening in your fridge you are the crazed islamic warrior turning armageddon into something…
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All you want is their email in your inbox, indeed. We are elebrating National Poetry month all month on 37days. With thanks to Kurt Reineking for pointing me to this poet, and this poem.
Place and Time History is your own heartbeat. —Michael Harper ? Last night a man on the radio, a still young man, said the business district of his hometown had been plowed under. The town was in North Dakota. Grass, where the red-and-gold Woolworth sign used to be, where the revolving doors took him inside Sears; gone…
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Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches? Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives –tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like? Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you? …
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Stone Go inside a stoneThat would be my way.Let somebody else become a doveOr gnash with a tiger’s tooth.I am happy to be a stone. From the outside the stone is a riddle:No one knows how to answer it.Yet within, it must be cool and quietEven though a cow steps on it full weight,Even though a child throws…
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Crossroads The second half of my life will be black to the white rind of the old and fading moon. The second half of my life will be water over the cracked floor of these desert years. I will land on my feet this time, knowing at least two languages and who my friends are. I will dress for…
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Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride…
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Patti Digh is the author of six books, including bestsellers Life is a Verb and Creative is a Verb. She travels the world teaching others about mindfulness: to live fully, love well, let go deeply, and make a difference. Patti's comments have appeared on PBS and in The New York Times, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, the London Financial Times, and many other international publications. She writes a thank you note every morning.
