I took the ornaments off the tree and put them on the glass-top table in the sunroom. I felt ineffably sad doing so. The ornaments rested on the table for several days. I felt overwhelmingly lazy and sluggish about getting…
Pepper and Poems
117 Articles
117
Mary Oliver shows me the way. Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does it End? There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea…
The language is not hard to understand – not difficult at all – the ground says I will catch you if you – when you – fall. The language is not hard to understand – not difficult at all –…
The poet Jane Hirshfield recently came to my attention. Imagine Mary Oliver with an edge, steel in her veins. I’m most of the way through Hirshfield’s new collection, The Asking, which draws from her work dating back to 1972 and…
His hand shook as he told the very short story of the angel who came to earth with a torch and pail. I wasn’t going to tell you this, he said, smiling, but I’ve decided to. This is what Richard…
This weekend I’m at a seminar hosted by the Center for Action and Contemplation, Richard Rohr’s spiritual think tank in Albuquerque. A stroke, a heart attack, and cancer treatments have taken their toll on Rohr. He was rolled onto stage…
“Oh, Mary!” begins at a fever pitch – loud, over the top, brassy – and stays that way. Imagine Mary Todd Lincoln as a frustrated cabaret dancer and her husband as a frustrated gay man, each part played to comic…
A grocery chain in Iceland – Bónus Supermarkets – began selling a slim volume of poetry at its counters on eternal “special offer” several decades ago. It became the best-selling volume of poetry in the history of Iceland, and I…
I’ve taken myself to the beach for the first time in a long while: craving the sea. It does not disappoint, doing the same thing it always does. Keeping its promises. Today, holding its temper: a cheerful churn at the…