Posts Tagged ‘love’
Art, Icons, and Ant Ovaries
October 11, 2016
“A world created out of silence gives itself over to prayer.” I’m listening to local painter Debra Korluka discuss her work: the icons she’s painted since she was a child studying in the Ukrainian Orthodox church. I’m interested in the symbolism of an icon’s composition and in the paints—their colors, chemistry, poisons, and history. All…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Daybreak, Winter”
June 24, 2016
I have a complicated relationship with the sun, having grown up in southern California and now making my home in the moody Pacific Northwest. I swerve between desperation for even an hour of brightness and a stoic claim that my poet-soul finally feels at home in this rain-soaked climate. So Betsy Sholl’s poem about the…
Read MoreA Letter To My Sister
June 7, 2016
Eve, my sister The one who took the fall Eve, my sister Mother of us all Lift up your head Don’t hide your blushing face The promised One Is finally on His way —Mary Consoles Eve, “Rain for Roots” You have been my first companion in a lifetime of laughter, quarrels, and confidences. Without you,…
Read MorePassing the Possibility of Parenthood
May 18, 2016
Early one recent morning, I’m still half-asleep. The cat lies curled up between Craig and me, and when my leg moves against her, she snarls. “Hey, now, little one,” he says, bending his face down to her and scratching her softly behind the neck. “That’s not the way to act, is it?” In my sleepy…
Read MoreGrief and the Weight of Glory
May 17, 2016
The wind whips through the quilts and sheets on our clothesline, cracking now and then like a benign thunderclap, tugging at the clothespins I inherited from my grandmother’s childhood farm. My daughter and I watch them as we swing together on the playset her father built a few seasons ago, before she was born. This…
Read MoreMy Prayer Is Not Prayer
May 11, 2016
My prayer is not prayer, not exactly. It includes words. It may even begin with words: “Modeh ani l’fanecha / grateful am I in your presence; baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, Melech Haolam, hanotein laya-eif ko-ach / Praise to You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, who gives strength to the weary; ahavah rabbah ahavtanu…
Read MoreEvil’s Share
May 5, 2016
It has been said that one of the most effective means by which evil can have its way is to convince us that we are too abominable to love. It’s not a bad tactic. When our faults are catalogued back to us, the inventory is hair-raising and earth-shattering. This is one of the methods attributed…
Read MoreLove in the Time of Bacteria
May 2, 2016
Last week, I walked up Dale Street from the train station. It’s a perilous walk owing to the lack of shoulder and the speed at which people drive, a recklessness passed off to people living in poor neighborhoods. Shattered green glass, no trees to bar the bright spring sun, bits of fluttering paper garbage—anonymous love…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “The Grackles”
April 15, 2016
Here is a poem that silently enacts a conversion. The poem starts off with a string of scornful terms for the speaker’s new neighbors, culminating in the almost mean pun on their child’s “grin” as “grim.” But right after this, the speaker begins to soften her terms: she notices a “warmth” in this noisy, dirty,…
Read MoreChanging Positions: A Meditation for Campaign Season
March 17, 2016
(With help from Donovan, D. T. Suzuki, Qingyuan Weixin, Wallace Stevens, democracy, REM, Bonnie Raitt, David Bowie, Stanley Kunitz, neuroscience, Torah, Ben Bag Bag, The Rabbis, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, you.) First there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is. Donovan, are you flip-flopping? Or is it you, mountain? It…
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