Lessons on how to become a poet in forty eight years or more I wake each day at first light as yet unrested My body stirs, and will not be quieted Am I crossing a new threshold? …

Happy !@#&%*? New Year For years my eyes have scanned the horizon, looking for a place to settle. I’ve spent my whole life searching for level ground, an ideal place to put down roots. Something that looks like IT, as in: This Is It! Usually, as the calendar comes to…

Impressions from The Year in Pictures, an annual recap put out by The New York Times It’s a December tradition, of sorts Though I can’t remember it ever looking quite so dismal Were the end times ever this close before? For so many, they are not coming They are already…

Dear New Mother, “How many babies have you delivered?” It’s a common question when people find out I used to be a home birth midwife. Two is the fairest answer I can come up with, since that is the number of people who have passed through my bones on their…

To maintain honesty with myself, when do I have to admit that I’m a barely functioning adult? This morning I finally listened to some voicemails from August. Though I admit, I deleted the ones from June and July I still hadn’t opened. Every day I move items from yesterday’s to-do…

A Blessing Way Story AdobeStock_139879888.jpeg My body remembers the weight of the cauldron like a gravid womb so heavy with a wire handle, too thin that cut into my hand as I bent to move the dead weight of it For weeks you had been throwing all the most disgusting…

Living safely behind glass i A beautiful bird came to perch outside my window on a shrub, heavy with red berries — poisonous, they say. Beware! Well, good, all the better for man to leave alone, I say. One less wild thing to be conquered for profit. ii The name…

Monkeys are running the show, folks. “It’s not a problem if you accept it,” says my new friend Florette. She’s 85, and still out bopping around on every dance floor in town, so I listen when she speaks. We were talking about sleep issues. “It’s a big problem for me,”…

The Path of Most Resistance It’s a slow rise to the surface. There are no brilliant autumnal colors heralding the change in temperature here in south Louisiana, but everyone has been bundled up against the chilly 50 degree weather. We Fairbanksans are used to cold, but also drier climes, and…