A Divine Comedy
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I’m a slow learner. Or another word: stubborn. Pain is a patient teacher. I love the way Denise Levertov imagines a gentle conversation with grief… Talking to Grief By Denise Levertov Ah, grief, I should not treat you like a…
While winter’s last bloom graced flower and tree, the cardinals in my yard kept singing their song of Spring. The coyotes kept to their usual path, shortly after dawn. The doves found the seed I put out for all…
What will Spring look like in Kyiv? I dread it for them – and for us. This week, an icy grip holds the city. And worse approaches. In my yard, the world awakens and gladdens. Part of me does too….
It’s Saturday morning – dark, early – and I’m in a hotel room in the desert. I’m eating a Twix bar in bed and drinking English Breakfast tea. A tiny fire burns in the tiny fireplace, fed by a…
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti is “that rarest of novels – as alien as a moon rock and every bit as wondrous” (Kirkus Reviews). Or maybe it’s “an underwhelming fable, a sort of Generation X Jonathan Livingston Seagull”(Publisher’s Weekly). I’m trying to sort…
A blood-red cardinal lies murdered in the garden, dropped by hawk or cat. Daffodils and hyacinths that emerged too early shiver and regret. The lenten roses, soggy, droop. In times such as these, one turns to poetry… Heavy by Mary Oliver…
Is it possible to see yourself and the world anew, from a broader perspective, honoring a deep “inner knowing” that we all possess? Lisa Miller makes a powerful case for it in The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and…
As Winter Storm Izzy whirls through the greater region, with its glaze and spit and powder, a dream of summer comes to me. Meet me there, if you’d like, with poet Mary Ruefle, in my mother’s backyard… Mary Ruefle is…
In the hush and glory of this week’s snow, I worry about the boxwoods. Their burdened boughs bend to extremes. De-formed, the bushes no longer resemble themselves. Wretched and wrecked, they need some relief, and soon. And yet – each moment,…