The Scottish people may not have been big fans, but this Arizona girl found the first frost enchanting. (Until she almost slipped on ice during her run, that is.) His kiss was cold, pinking my pale face As he sucked my breath away in steaming plumes; But smooth and crystalline as spider's lace, Beneath my…
He began the fall in wealth, His arms hanging heavy with green, new-money Made in spring. It was the cash that grows on trees: Easily spent and easily made, Budded by summer and Minted by the gold-standard sun. Investing at Autumn’s asking, He lays a few leavings in her chill-bone hands But scatters the rest…
The hill was ghostly. Even before finding an old sign revealing its history as an early Christian burial site, I could sense the tension between life and death in the air that chilled my face. It was a place pulsing with potential, yet quiet and lonely as a sleeping giant. Insignificance and eternity confronted me…
A year ago today I picked up a copy of Rupi Kaur's Milk and Honey in a Waterstones in Cambridge. I read it cover-to-cover without sitting and — admittedly — without purchasing it. I was intrigued, but, when I closed it and placed it back on its display, I realized that the fascination I'd felt with…
I've been rereading Ray Bradbury's (...may he rest in peace...so sayeth we all...) Fahrenheit 451. Actually, I'm listening to it on Audible; there is a performance of it by Tim Robbins which literally makes me weep. It's THAT good. Anyway, as I revisit this all-too-prophetic story of a society so frightened by what is uncomfortable, challenging, or…
When I was a freshman in college, I had the not-uncommon experience of feeling 150682234% overwhelmed. It was honestly a feat of grace and strength that I stuck it out, but by the second semester, how happy I was that I did! As that terrified, homesick 18-year-old, I went on a choir retreat and nearly…
Empty, the sanctuary waits beneath a tree, beneath a cross— the branches a burden and trough to bear body and newborn king. White wails of a storm without are vespers whispered warm within, And yet echo infant, age-old cry — of beginning and of end. In the lonely silence, all is dead, yet all holds living…
They were going to throw me away, Out with the rubbish bin. I, who you used to play, When you were small children. . Did it not mean much to you? The scales we learned together? Maybe if I were shiny, new, I'd be kept out of the weather. . But moving on is hard;…
I was a stranger here yet better known Away from all I thought myself to be— Away from all routines that made me, me, I found myself in being severed grown. Away from all the people I loved best I found myself in newer company— I found my soul in this older country Away from…
My feet pounding the pavement to the beat Of poetry that laid the cobbled street, I feel a shaking sense of bittersweet For a face I only once did meet And wind that sings its fingers through my hair Will not again its subtle secrets share, Nor will the trees and flowers for me bear…
