Burning Bush

This bush is on fire,
and we have misplaced god.

Dear Copyeditor,

I am writing you
this poem
the way a gazelle
must grow ever sleeker
and quicker
to escape
the indelicate jaws
of the lion.

Pieces

The thing about puzzles is, there’s a moment between when you have all the edges done, and when you have enough of the middle filled in to see what’s missing, what’s left.

Another

Crow in a birch tree
shakes rain from its wings…

Young Female Writer’s Lament

Why is everything I try to do coming out stilted and slow today? I blame you. The general, faceless you. The you who keeps telling me I need to be smaller, wittier, brief.

#WritersResist: Bring the Fire Down

Move. Between justice and mercy, between nakedness and warfare, between all that you would not do and all you have done, unknowing…

Can Clowns Save Our Souls?

We might try to follow where the clown leads, but we cannot hope to pin him down. It is only when we stop insisting that the clown be just one thing that he is free to become the multiplicity of being that he really is.

Honoring the Past: Weaving Story from Memory

Pagans like to say, “What is remembered, lives.” Memory is re-membering, the act of giving life to the past through rituals of witness.

Soul Writing: Finding Balance in Group Spiritual Practice

Writing in a group setting is different, much more like praying together. Or sitting together in meditation. Being present to each other in-process, witness to the very act of discovery and composition, soul-deep in the chaotic waters of creativity. This is writing as a spiritual practice — a kind of sacred deep listening, what Karen Hering calls in her book Writing to Wake the Soul, “contemplative correspondence.”

The Sights of Santa Fe

Even just a few days in Santa Fe can leave me speechless…

Partly because I’m parched — my rain-soaked soul, so used to wandering the misty shores of Puget Sound, rebels against the high elevation and incredibly dry climate… But mostly because, in the midst of the desert, the astounding color and diversity of human culture overwhelms me with amazement and gratitude.