With poet therapists and community beloveds Nick Mazza and Perie Longo Toward the end of April, I had the honor of giving a keynote...

Thunder, then a long stretch of wind shaking up Cottonwood Mel outside my window. A plane overhead from faraway heading faraway. The...

Kelley of the Lilac Every April I land in pure and blossoming enchantment every direction I look. Trees barely hold up their...

Hiking in Bend Bend in 1985 People say you either love or hate the desert. For me, it turns out to be both/and rather than either/or. When Ken and I first drove the many, many, many hours to Big Bend National Park for our honeymoon almost 30 years ago, my first response was crying, but not tears of joy. “We drove all that way for this?” I said. The despair that took over my stomach spread to the rest of me, including my eyes, which made it hard for me to see any value in bein

Despite living with a man who's all about the stars (as well as the flowers, the grasses, and seasonal migrations of many species), I...

I wanted to go. I didn’t want to go. I figured I might, but probably wouldn’t, yet just in case, I tossed the bathing suit and towel in...

I feel as if I just returned from a trip that entailed sheer cliffs, hair-pin turns, long treks through the desert without enough water,...

The nights get longer, snow I seem to have gotten through the day of constant crying, followed by the day of crazy anger, all punctuated...

Jerry with me shortly after I finished chemo in 2002 When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002, I discovered what many already know...

“Listen, this day is MAGIC and I’m not kidding,” Kelley Hunt wrote today on Facebook, and I knew at once the truth of such moments. It...

Ferguson, Missouri is about a four-hour drive east of where I live, and yet it seems a world apart. In my town, which is far more white,...

Rachel, her brother Micah and mom LaVetta in 1983 This was a girl who grew up in the background, preferring to help others shine and...

The days of awe come exactly when they’re supposed to, launching with Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, and ending with breaking fast on...

I didn’t always buy myself flowers each Friday, and actually, I’m not even sure when I started, but it was sometime in the last five or...

“Undead Poet Laureate of Kansas,” I had Ken magic-marker onto a white shirt, and then, with a purse full of bookmarks to commemorate the...

On Facebook, at the grocery store, and even in my own kitchen, discussions heat up about the Israeli bombing of Gaza, and the Hamas...

Now that all three of our children are young adults, I realize how difficult it is to be moseying around on not-completely-fully-formed...

A standing still (and surprised) artist on Mass. and 9th St. As I always say, there are two rules to Lawrence: 1) Don’t leave; and 2) If...

This is kind of understandable although not a happy thing: we still have, or at least had, Iowa St. to the west of us only now Iowa is...

Today it was back to the city pool for the first time since late last August. I paid my money, drank my water, took off my cover-up and...