Throughout my healing journey — the cancer diagnosis and visits with three oncologists, the big-time scans and fears, the joys and...

You As a Poem for Denise The poem would rise from fossils and columbarium time-traveled from your memory or the continent’s, through two...

When I had breast cancer 17 years ago, I learned some things about resilience, the ability to bounce back. There’s nothing like being...

When I saw the video, I was amazed at how calm and calming the humans and, to some extent, the snake were in doing what it took for the...

Emily Dickinson writes, “I started early — Took my dog.” In my case, I started late and took my croissant, and unlike Dickinson, I wasn’t looking for mermaids in the basement of the ocean or fleeing from the silver-tongued tide. Nope, I was savoring one flowering tree after another, that and buttery layers of flakey wonder. Each spring, I hit the pause button on my life at some moment, and if I’m smart, many moments, and head out into the neighborhoods to worship at the flee

On our trip to Brooklyn, New York City, and New Jersey — aka the mothership for me — grace abounded, often like a slip of paper or wings at the edge of vision. The moment we emerged at a new subway stop for us in Brooklyn, staring blankly at the sun after eight hours of travel, backpacks and suitcase heavy, a kind sanitation worker walked over to me. “What you looking for, baby?” he asked. Sometimes it’s just tiny kindnesses that can steer a person the right direction. Days l

I was also simultaneously tired and exhilarated, in part because of the moon the night before keeping me up despite my...

The week began with news that blew me away: a beloved colleague, who was the rock and heart of the college where I work, died suddenly....

Daylight Savings Time, beside being a kick that keeps kicking our sleeping patterns for a while, heralds a kind of lightening up,...

What I wrote and what I’m living and learning is also very related to the Right Livelihood Professional Training I led for the first time...

As life has repeatedly, February is the longest month. Maybe it’s the overwrought repetition of cold, ice, and snow after months of...

I’ve been thinking so hard that I’ve landed in myself into the land of the fuzzy-headed, seeking solace in deep-sea naps on the couch,...

Eighteen years ago, we almost lost our youngest son Forest in a car accident involving black ice, three kids and me in a van, and the...

I can’t remember when I first encountered Oliver’s poetry, but I know this: it wasn’t when I was doing a PhD in poetry despite my comps...

When Ken and I went to Mount St. Helens with friends several years ago, I was dazzled by the patterned forests full of checkerboard green...

In reading Kate Bowler’s evocative essay, “How Cancer Changes Hope” and revising poems for my next book, How Times Moves, I’ve been...

Tomorrow the world turns over: our shortening days stop in their tracks, and the light begins lengthening those days for months to come....

V ery little in life is what we think it is, especially grief. In the three weeks since my mother-in-law died, I’ve ridden a pack of...

After crowd-sourcing some of the details for this poem from her children (including my husband), here’s what I wrote for the woman who...

A few hours after the Tree of Life shooting, we clung to each other — singing, praying, crying — at the Beth Israel Center in Madison,...