the truth of a well-lived and much-loved life Driving this past week, I don’t know where, I noticed the nascent greening of trees in the river valley. After a few much-needed days of precipitation – sloppy snow that turned to thick rain, and in the mountains, heavy snow accumulations, though hardly making a dent in snowpack levels needed to offset the province’s extreme risk for fires and drought – buds are popping, tiny indigo scilla and daffodils are blooming, the raspberry canes are reviving. Absorbed in the beauty of one of my favorite seasons, I suddenly realized this was how it looked th ..read more

TO SAY NOTHING BUT THANK YOU All day I try to say nothing but thank you, breathe the syllables in and out with every step I take through the rooms of my house and outside into a profusion of shaggy-headed dandelions in the garden where the tulips’ black stamens shake in their crimson cups. I am saying thank you, yes, to this burgeoning spring and to the cold wind of its changes. Gratitude comes easy after a hot shower, when my loosened muscles work, when eyes and mind begin to clear and even unruly hair combs into place. Dialogue with the invisible can go on every minute, and with surprisi ..read more

In celebration of Earth Day, today its 54th anniversary, my community hosted a free showing of the 2021 documentary, River, produced in Australia, narrated by actor Willem Dafoe, and described as “a stunning exploration of the timeless relationship between human civilization and Earth’s rivers, in all their majesty and fragility.” Writing in earlier posts that I call myself a “daughter of Niagara,” having been conceived, born, and raised in the land bordered by that mighty river, this film, with its breath-taking photography, orchestral score, and poetic narration, touched that place deep wit ..read more

STANDING BACK If this is the best you can do, citizens of the world, I resolve to become summer shadow, turtle adrift in a pool. Today a frog waited in a patch of jasmine for drizzles of wet before dawn. The proud way he rose when water touched his skin – his simple joy at another morning – compare this to bombing, shooting, wrecking, in more countries than we can count and ask yourself – human or frog? – Naomi Shihab Nye, Voices in the Air, 2018 – Talk about prescience. This poem was published in 2018, though most likely written months, if not years earlier. Given the poet’s Palestinian fa ..read more

“Aries and Viriditas” original artwork by Katharine Weinmann …to a world-weary empath you can’t leave Earth yet ~ because I just flipped ahead about a hundred pages in your story and I read that someday you will be the reason someone else doesn’t give up on their life I’m sorry to spoil the end of your epic tale ~ but someday you will be the one who ignites the blaze in another person’s heart that won’t ever be put out again don’t complicate the plot of your story ~ you are here to be lamplighter that hands out little bits of your flame to ensure the rest of the world doesn’t exist in da ..read more

One winter night in 2015, we attended a concert at our local theatre. Conceived and produced by local musician Cam Neufeld,“The Road to Django”celebrates the music of Django Reinhardt, founder of “gypsy jazz,” made famous with violinist Stephane Grappelli in Parisian hotclubs during the 1930s and 40s. Tracing its origins musically, following the migratory path of the Roma people from northern India to Spain, through Turkey and the Balkans to France, Cam and his ensemble educated and entertained us splendidly. But it was when their “journey” brought them to Andalusia with a “vignette” of Flamen ..read more

CROSS THE SEA A girl in Gaza speaks into a table microphone: Do you believe in infinity? If so, what does it look like to you? Not like a wall Not like a soldier with a gun Not like a ruined house bombed out of being Not like concrete wreckage of a school’s good hope a clinic’s best dream In fact not like anything imposed upon you and your family thus far in your precious thirteen years. My infinity would be the never-ending light you deserve every road opening up in front of you. Soberly she nods her head. In our time voices cross the sea easily but sense is still difficult to come by ..read more

on the altar of life’s elements I Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. – Rainer Maria Rilke II the places in our heart where the world took bites out of us may never fully heal and will lik ..read more

watching the sunrise on the Sahara a year ago It’s dawn. Still dark, as yesterday’s “spring ahead” time change makes more noticeable the gift of more daylight in the evening. It’s Monday, when I typically drop a post, or try to. Last night making pizza and watching the Oscars interrupted my typical pattern of getting to my desk at 6 to write. Too, yesterday I sent off to my editor the big writing project I’d been waking early each weekday for the past few weeks to complete. After pressing the “send” button on the email, I took a breather and walked in sunshine warming and snow melting, passin ..read more

There are those who want the world to remain on its current path. This is not only unacceptable, but it is painfully unimaginative. For the beauty of our generation is we are uniquely situated to achieve what so many in this world currently consider impossible. How exquisitely beautiful it will be to watch the current narrative go down in flames, then witness poetics & phoenix rise from the ashes. Embers, ancestors, and angels await us, loved ones. Forward. – Mark Gonzales – In Times of Terror, Wage Beauty, 2014 I’d forgotten I had on my poetry shelf this eloquent “collage of visions ..read more