It is now officially the time of year when I get to pull two of my favorite possessions out from their summer resting place beneath the bed, and display them proudly on the rubber mat by the front door.

My enormous winter boots.

They are huge, and puffy, and have no laces — you simply step into them. Then, later, like the comfiest possible military-grade foam foot trap, it takes five minutes and some Cirque du Soleil contortions to get back out. They are black and silver, with tactical-looking clips and cinch straps that do nothing, and a fabric rim around the calf that ties shut and works very well to keep the snow out. I inevitably forget to close this flap when removing snow from our car, and I end up doing the world’s hardest yoga move in our driveway, trying to pull off one boot while jumping in a circle on the other leg, so I can shake out the melting snowball I somehow managed to get wedged down by my ankle.

My boots are warm, awesome, and look like something one might wear while visiting the moon. I love them.

I also did not want to buy them.

Today’s poem is technically a spring poem, but I was reminded of it the other day, when, for the first time this season, I pulled on my beloved boots:

Putting Away My Winter Boots

I am sorry I insisted,
when you bought 
these winter boots,

that my ratty old sneakers
did the job just fine.

I have now spent a happy season
pretending to be an arctic explorer
whenever I went to get the mail.

You were so right.
I was so wrong.

It’s a season of thanks here in the U.S., and I hope this newsletter finds you with many things to be grateful for. I’m thankful, as ever, for . For many reasons, one of which is her excellent taste in fine winter footwear.

Chat again soon,
~ A

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Late last night, in moonlight filtered by low, swift clouds, I noticed the hills behind our home were wearing crowns of snow. They melted at first light, but reminded me of this poem, about a wintry childhood adventure:

A True and Accurate Record of the Grand Expedition

My mother baked potatoes, 
wrapping them in foil 
to keep we cousins from freezing
in our sleeping bags, 

and at the chosen hour 
we journeyed many dozens of feet 
into the darkening forest
to make our sturdy camp.

In the night our tarp collapsed 
so gently we never noticed,
and we woke to a crystalline dawn, 
delighted at the warm blanket of snow
and ravenous for our potatoes. 

They did not, however, satisfy. 

So, after a brief and hungry silence, 
we broke camp and returned to base 
to give our full report, 
and to inquire as to the availability 
of dry mittens, a hearty fire,

and pancakes.

I hope my poem this week finds you enjoying a cozy adventure,
~ A

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It’s cold here, and rainy. The hills are threaded with mist in a way that stirs something in the heart, and — when visible through breaks in the clouds — snow can be seen on the mountains, making patient advance toward the valleys.

Winter approaches, and after a busy season I look forward to the stillness.

The weather has reminded me of a poem I sketched last fall, just a few days after I started this newsletter. It’s something of an aberration for me. I typically try for a direct, concise voice in my prose and poetry. (Try and often fail — my fingers do so love typing a bit of flowery, purple prose.) But in my visual art practice I work almost solely in abstract expressionism, and something of that bled over here, into a poem that feels finished yet whose full meaning still eludes me:

Untitled

A line of birds takes flight
from the crest of our home 
and I do not know their names.

They form a curve
then a chaos
then a line again

pearled along the high tension wire
stretching into the mountains
and I do not know their ages,

nor how many will survive
the coming winter
to grace again our roof in spring.

There’s something here I quite like, that I don’t think would work as well if I leaned into my typical mode and removed the abstractions, especially the strangeness around not knowing ‘their’ ages. Whose ages? The birds? The mountains? The manmade pylons carrying power over the horizon?

I honestly don’t know.

But I do know this poem makes me feel the turning of the seasons, somehow. The welcoming of the symbolic death that is winter and the season of silence and darkness and peace. Of the renewal it promises, waiting for us on the other side.

In the author’s note to her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin wrote something I think about a lot when I sit down to write:

The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

I’m working on the first draft of a new novel this month, and I feel her sentiment quite deeply — novelists ‘say in words what cannot be said in words.’ I don’t think Ursula would mind at all if I include a bit of poetry under the same umbrella.

I hope my poem this week finds you well, and looking forward to a little stillness,
~ A

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This past week Substack Reads shared one of my poems, which was a very fun surprise. So quite a few of you are new subscribers! Hello, and welcome. 👋 I’m so glad you’re here.

As I mentioned in previous letters, I’m just coming to the end of the busiest part of my work year. So one more re-post and then (hopefully!) back to new poems. This week, a poem and post I first shared in January. It happens to be one of ’s faves 😊:

Sometimes a moment will install itself in the theater of my memory with a certain… something.

Not clarity exactly, nor intensity, but more like a quality Joan Didion referred to as a “shimmer around the edges.” Such moments don’t need to be particularly consequential. In fact, they tend not to be. They are often simple events whose personal meaning is only revealed to me later, by writing about them, usually in a poem.

Today’s poem explores one such shimmering moment:

Seattle Moonrise

We rode the ferry together
and moved as one to the stern
to watch the moon rise
heavy and round above the city.

No one spoke for a long time,
because we were young and sure.

And since it seemed as though
anything at all could happen
in the oncoming years,
it felt, just then,
as if everything would.

I like collecting these moments in poems — over time, they become a sort of emotional scrapbook or photo album.

And speaking of time: in a previous letter I shared a poem which had one word I spent nearly two years editing. This week’s poem is the polar opposite: it fell from my pen (in response to a February Poetry Adventure prompt) almost completely formed — an extremely rare thing for me — but only after the moment spent more than a decade as a quiet, persistently shimmering memory. Which I suppose is just a different way of saying this poem took a decade to write.

Please feel free to share this poem with anyone you think might enjoy it:

Thanks for reading,
~ A

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Another, lightly edited re-post this week, as I make my way through this, the busiest time of my year. And there’s some fitting layers to this one, since the original post dealt with the idea of repeating oneself as an artist…

Sometimes I repeat myself.

I’m not sure when or where I internalized the idea that a “real” artist — poet, painter, etc. — is supposed to be infinitely original, never repeating oneself, always generating something out of nothing, and certainly never mimicking anyone else. But it’s an odd rule, defeated by simple observation. The history of art is filled with examples of whole bodies of work — entire lifetimes, even — centered around one or two themes or ideas.

Over time, I’ve come to realize the impulse to infinite originality is quite damaging. It has a smothering effect, because it cuts the artistic fire off from two vital sources of fuel — inspiration and exploration.

Today I want to touch on exploration, because today’s poem explores the same central idea as another poem I posted previously:

Star Gazing

This light left those stars 
an eon ago —
we see the fire of their past.

And, because we shine back, 
the stars 
witness ours.

So somewhere in the universe 
we will always be 
as we are, just now —

alive,
holding hands,
looking up at the sky.

I felt a twinge of embarrassment posting this poem, since it bears such a strong similarity to that other, previously posted poem — they both use the holding of hands to create an image of shared, silent awe at the power of nature, and to symbolize the desire to hold on to loved ones during the tiny slice of infinity we briefly inhabit together.

But over the years I’ve come to appreciate just how important it is, as an artist, to repeatedly explore a theme, an image, or a turn of phrase. To let go the desire to be seen as infinitely original, and instead discover how many different things one idea has to teach me.

And I love what I find in the repetition. I begin to see threads running through my work. My poems start to support one another, saying things not only as individuals, but in concert. They are in conversation with each other, sometimes across decades.

Were I more resistant to repetition I wouldn’t have even written some of my poems, let alone shared them publicly. But I’m very glad for what they teach me: It’s almost always fun to find new vistas as an artist, to see what’s over the next unexplored hill. But sometimes it’s rewarding to stay in one spot for a while and keep digging. To see how deep the well goes, or if a vein of art leads all the way to the heart of the mountain.

Thanks for reading. I hope my poem this week finds you well, and gazing up at the stars,
~ A

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Cold nights this past week have really brought out autumn colors in our hills and trees. And I’m still in that busy phase I mentioned a few weeks ago. So, today I thought I’d share another poem (and post) I first shared when this newsletter was young. One of my favorite autumn poems:

Old Bricks

I wish to buy a house
of new brick
and live there with you
three hundred autumns

growing soft
and ivy-covered
losing edges
to the rain.

The idea of slow weathering by wind, water, and time has always had a romantic appeal for me — I love sea glass, bent trees, and old maps of the places rivers used to be. And I love the way weathered brick looks soft around the edges.

My poetry practice centers around editing — a type of erosion or weathering, I suppose. Sometimes the editing process can hang on a single word for a long time.

At first this poem read “a hundred autumns,” because it sounded poetic the day I wrote it. (You can read that first public version on my Instagram, signed with an old pen name. 😊) But the poem wasn’t true yet. If allowed, I would live with Petra until the stars burn out. A hundred years won’t cut it. So the poem drifted, over two years of editing, from “a hundred” to “five hundred” to “a thousand” to “ten thousand” to “for all of the autumns,” which… really wasn’t working poetically.

Eventually I realized the problem lay in the abstraction. The bigger the number, the more factual but less true. Less impactful. Empty of emotion, somehow.

But “three hundred autumns”?

For me, that one word — far too brief for the eternal heart, far too big for the mortal body — finally lets the poem say what it means.

I hope this finds most of you enjoying a cozy autumn, and the rest of you enjoying a beautiful spring. (I see you, my dozen or so subscribers from the southern hemisphere! 🙃❤️),
~ A

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I’ve written before that sometimes I repeat myself when writing poems. Well, today I repeat myself when posting them. 😊

I first posted this poem last December, as my second-ever poetry post, well before most you had found my little newsletter (🎉). I like writing winter poems, and this is one of my favorites. Since the weather here turned so cold this week, I’ve been thinking about winter and was reminded of this poem, so I thought I’d share it again.

Winter Morning To-do List

You will grow old and die,
but first, today, you must
press a palm to the frosted window

and burn an absence there
in the shape of your hand,

using nothing more
than the mere fire
of your existence.

(If you’re new here, I perhaps should have warned you about my love of melancholy…)

In my poetry practice, poems are not static things. My poetry journal is a word garden, and I spend a lot of time there weeding, pruning, and helping things grow. This poem has changed form very slightly, since I last shared it. If you’re curious about the evolution, please check out the original post. (You can even like that post, and mess with the algorithms a little! 👻)

Thanks for reading. I hope this finds you with the fire of your existence burning hot and bright,
~ A

P.S. — I may be the world’s clumsiest marketer, and among the top, say, three or four shyest humans on the internet. So this newsletter mainly grows when you share it. It feels like a team effort, and this week we passed 225 subscribers (go team!). (And when I say ‘we’, I mean ‘you’. I did nothing.) Thank you. 🙏

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This week I have two “ologies” for you.

First, an apology:

Mid-September to mid-November is the busiest time of year in my day job. (Yes, I have a day job — I’m not one of those billionaire poets one is always reading about in the tabloids.) (Not yet, anyway…) I meant to include a postscript in my last newsletter, warning that weekly realities may not align with weekly intentions during this time of year. I forgot the postscript, realities manifested, and now I’ve missed two weeks in a row with you. Mea culpa, and I’m sorry for all the bated breath.

Second, an etymology:

This week’s poem was inspired by one of my favorite writerly diversions — investigating the origins of words. A few weeks ago, I happened to look up what I thought were two unrelated English words, at different times on the same day, and learned something that delighted me:

Etymologies

I learned today
that freedom and friend
share the same root
and the meaning 
of that word 
is love.

I think of this 
as I think of you —
how we keep each other
wild and safe,
grounded and free,
rooted, soaring,

loved.

I hope this finds you well,
~ A

P.S. — As mentioned, until Nov. 15 or so this newsletter will be more weeklyish than weekly. But I’m still here, poeing away in my poetry workshop, looking forward to the stillness of winter. Thank you for reading and being a part of this adventure, in every season.

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It was my birthday this week (🥳), which always kindles a crackling melancholy in my soul. (Don’t worry, we poets love a bracing melancholy.) So I’ve been thinking about the passage of time, and the kind of life I want to live. About the things I would like to leave along the edges of whatever path I take, for any other travelers who happen to come along after me.

It’s reminded me of a poem I wrote during the most recent February Poetry Adventure:

Ghost Stories

In the end,
if things go well,
we’ll just be stories
others love to tell.

(I did mention the bracing melancholy, yes?)

To give credit where it might be due, it’s possible this poem was subconsciously inspired by or Dr. Who, both of whom I admire as poets and fellow travelers in time, though I have no direct memory of encountering their quotes before writing these lines and then Googling to see if I’d heard them somewhere before. So, this poem is either an homage, or I get to boldly claim that I share a common muse with Margaret Atwood and Dr. Who. Either way, time for a little more ice cream. (🥳)

I hope this poem finds you living a life filled with stories,
~ A

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I was once terrified of spiders. Moving to a town that is apparently some sort of spider Coachella was an unsettling experience.

But I also live with the kindest person I have ever met, one who feels an almost instant affinity with any living thing. So ours is a household with a dedicated spider jar waiting on the counter, and — unless the spider on the wall is clearly one of two local species dangerous to clumsy mammals — friendly spiders are gently caught and deposited safely to the garden or, in winter, a quiet corner of the garage.

I’ve learned many lessons from our spider jar. For instance, jumping spiders are absolutely awesome. They look like tiny, fuzzy, cute, sci-fi mechwarrior robots. They are intelligent hunters who will patiently stalk their prey before closing with stunning speed. And if one takes up residence in a forgotten pill box on your desk, they will return every day to hang out between hunting excursions, watching you with open curiosity. (You can name them Pepcid. They won’t mind.) We don’t even bother catching jumping spiders anymore. They are fully welcome to wander our shared home.

And those spiders dangerous to clumsy mammals? Turns out many of the friendly spiders are dangerous to the dangerous ones. Now all we see are friendly spider, on patrol, guarding their clumsy mammal charges.

This past week I caught a big scary spider in the corner, one I’d never seen before, one I would have crushed immediately in the past. But once safely in the clear spider jar, I discovered it wasn’t a spider at all. It was a rather majestic, gentle, lumbering beetle. One I felt an instant affinity with.

A couple of decades living with my kind human has changed me, in the best way I can imagine. So has her spider jar.

Untitled

Be kind as you can
to the little lives
woven with your own —

the gentle mouse in the woodshed,
the sturdy ant on the lawn chair,
the patient spider at the windowpane.

Try to remember
their joy at discovering
such an inviting home.

Try to understand
their horror at finding it
infested with humans.

Thanks for reading,
~ A

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On a recent trip to the city I was moving down a sidewalk, ruminating on mundanities, when I came upon a pair of tiny birds pecking at the concrete. The first flew a few feet away as I approached, and resumed their pecking. But the second cocked their head to one side, looked me in the eye, puffed their feathers out, planted their tiny feet, and whistled right at me.

Their defiance brought me to a complete standstill in the busy stream of pedestrians, and the bird’s call evaporated my ruminations, returning me abruptly and unceremoniously to myself. To the present moment and the living world, which is, of course, where our actual lives are always happening.

Into the soul silence created by our encounter, I heard someone speak the first lines of today’s poem. (I can only assume it was the bird — they had a poet’s eyes.)

Untitled

Tell me of the last
woodland spirit you met,
of a forest sprite

burning with life,
or a hatchling bird
born with the knowledge

of how to sing your name.
On which recent day
did you remember to whisper

an old secret to the wind?
On which night did you stand
in the glimmering dark

and share your newest tears 
with the rain?
Tell me you have not forgotten

how to speak the nameless thing.
Swear to me you still know
that the storm and forest path,

the sea and the endless, open plains,
are your true
and only home.

After delivering the beginning of this poem to me (and, apparently, calling me out for not spending enough time in nature), the tiny, bold bird did not flit off into a nearby tree and let me pass. Instead it was I who dipped my head respectfully to them, stepped wide around their substantial personal space, and hurried off to find paper and pen.

I hope today’s poem finds you well,
~ A

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This past week brought our first real rain after a long, hot summer. We stood at the open door, listening to the thunder and breathing petrichor. We’ve had cooler evenings since the rain, and they have me longing for autumn and afternoons by the fire:

Untitled

I know not which page
in the book of fate
keeps tally of the matches
we’ve yet to strike
or of our remaining
evenings by the fire.

I only know, my love,
that with a few sticks
and a little paper,
you kindle new eternities
with a simple flick
of your hand.

~ A

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A book worm is a person who reads many books. I am a book worm.

But I live with a book dragon.

A book dragon is like a book worm, only far more powerful and majestic. They not only read many books, but also collect them in a great treasure hoard — both read and yet-to-be-read — filling their cozy abode. They create artful stacks of books on end-tables, more functional stacks on nightstands, and their actual bookshelves are marvels of biblio-engineering, with horizontal books tucked neatly atop the vertical ones. They leave no bookless nooks, no tomeless tables, and no room bereft of words.

The den of my book dragon is my happy place, and I’m so grateful she lets me live with her:

Book Lovers

Just us.
(And books, of course.)

(A library, I promise.)
(A big one!)

I hope my poem this week finds you curled up and cozy, upon your mighty hoard of books,
~ A

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I love living with another writer. Petra and I share a symmetrical passion for books, stories, and tea, and it makes for a cozy life.

We also share a love of pens, though that love is asymmetrical. By this I mean we each have our own favorite brand of pen. And while she openly does not like writing with mine, I… secretly enjoy scribbling with hers. Thus my pens never wander around the house, while sometimes hers (through deeply mysterious and mystical means) end up on my desk.

Sorry, Love. 😘

It’s hard for a writing home to have too many pens. It’s also hard for our home to have too many books, too much tea, or too many mugs:

Tea Mugs for Two Writers

There’s the one with the chicken 
standing on the pig,
and the one with the dog 
that took two tries to buy. 

There’s the round-handled one,
filled with your pens,
and the ones on the high shelf
meant only for guests.

There’s the two little white ones 
you want when you’re sick, 
and your blue everyday one, 
shaped like your hands,

then my everyday one,
which reminds me of friends,
and the one with the castle
from that thrift store on Sprague.

It’s retired from tea now,
and holds pens on my desk,
because we convinced ourselves
it must be painted in lead,

and there’s the one right beside it
we shattered that night
laughing and running
wild in our home.

I glued it back together, 
a fun ceramic puzzle,
and now it holds a tiny ruler
and even more pens.

There’s something about these ‘catalogue’ poems I really enjoy. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but if you enjoy this format, too, I shared another one a few months ago you might like, about the history of my tiny desk.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this finds you drinking something delicious from a beloved mug, scribbling your thoughts with the perfect pen (borrowed or otherwise),
~ A

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Petra and I are hard at work on several book projects right now, including the sequel to Manly Hero, so I’ve been spending lots of time doing that most writerly of things — staring at blank sheets of paper, wondering what worlds they contain.

It’s reminded me of this poem, about holding lofty goals with grace and humor, and about the sacred nature of common things:

Paper Prayer

Oh, grant me the noble patience
of an empty sheet of paper,
imbued with all potential,

equally content
to bear a great eureka 
and bend the flow of history

or a quick reminder
to grab three lemons
and a jar of spicy pickles.

I hope these first days of August find you well, with plenty of lemons and spicy pickles. :)
~ A

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The air is cool and gentle this morning — a relief after weeks of temperatures playing around the 100ºF mark. It has me looking forward to autumn coziness, and reminds me of this poem I wrote late last year, about an evening walk by the river:

The River Road

We walked the river road at dusk,
worrying softly over old futures 
and new pain,

until a cloud of sparrows moved
suddenly through young trees
aflame with yellow leaves

and we stopped to watch them
rise in the fading light,
carrying our breath away.

I hope my poem this week finds you well, and perhaps, like me, eagerly anticipating autumn. (One of my top four favorite seasons, btw. 😉)

Thanks for reading,
~ A

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I’ve written before about how my poems can sometimes take many years to write. My process is improvisational — I will often edit many poems at once when I sit down to work — but conceptually it can be broken down into three broad phases or modes:

• Finding, where I play with an idea or phrase until it either falls apart or comes alive. (Not every idea or phrase turns into a poem, so I think of this as ‘finding’ a poem.)

• Forming, where I write many drafts, until it feels like the poem has found its natural shape (in terms of length and number of stanzas) and content (in terms of what it’s trying to say).

• Finalizing, where I focus on specific word choices, trying to enhance the music and mood of the poem.

Today I thought we’d chat about two components of word choice — rhyming and alliteration — using this poem as an example:

Untitled

On a shelf in my home
sit an old shard of bone
and an odd stone shaped by the sea.

These serve well to remind
of the many ties that bind
and the ways the world has shaped me.

I don’t always rhyme so strongly in my poetry. But this poem was inspired by a couple of items sitting on a shelf in my study, the kinds of things we acquire absentmindedly on a hike or while walking the beach and then keep with us for a long time, displaying them prominently to ourselves in our own private spaces, though we may not be consciously aware of why we do so. Exploring that question called for something sing-songy that feels really good to say out loud, almost like an old nursery rhyme that could have been with me since childhood.

Poetry Nerd Time! 🤓

This poem has an obvious A-A-B C-C-B rhyme scheme: home, bone, sea, remind, bind, me. But, more subtly, I felt it called for strong consonance (the repetition of consonant sounds), and assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds) — things I frequently gravitate toward in the finalizing phase, when choosing between optional words.

In this poem we have the ‘s’ and ‘sh’ sounds, which I like and typically treat as a single consonant: shelf, sit, shard, stone, shaped, sea, these, serve, ties, ways, has, shaped. Almost the whole poem is right there in those words. And I specifically enjoy muddling consonants, by blurring the end of one word phonetically into the next: “… these serve…” and “… has shaped…”. I find it adds a sense of relaxation and flow.

When I want a poem to have a certain weight — a formality that makes it feel as if it’s been around a long time — I will intentionally try to build an extremely strong alliterative rhythm in the first half or so, and then break it unexpectedly, to evoke a subconscious emotional reaction. I’ll then return to the rhythm at the end, to create a sense of closure.

In the first stanza here, for example, we focus on assonance with ‘o’ sounds: on, home, old, bone, odd, stone. Then for two lines we break that focus and try to minimize ‘o’ sounds (‘to’ and ‘of’ are necessary, but their ‘ooo’ and ‘uhh’ sounds don’t register the same, and they sort of disappear). Instead, we switch to long ‘i’ assonance: remind, ties, bind. Then, in the last line, ‘ways’ and ‘world’ bring a new consonance, adding interest, with ‘world’ also subtly returning us to the round ‘o’ assonance of the first stanza, providing closure.

All of this effort is easier to see (and hear) if we take the same poem, in the same basic form, and say all the same things, but completely ignore alliteration and rhyme:

On a shelf in my house
I keep a piece of bone
and a weird rock shaped by the ocean.

These remind me
of all the connections in my life
and the ways I've been molded by them.

Very similar sentiment and format, but — for me, anyway — far less musical, evocative, and effective.

Okay! If you enjoyed any of that, then you definitely belong here, reading my little poetry newsletter. 🤣

Are there any word choice decisions you particularly appreciate when writing or reading poetry? I’d love to hear in the comments.

Thanks, as always, for reading,
~ A

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Today, a tiny love poem, inspired by a love so big I can never quite find the words:

Untitled

I’ve no need of a compass
for I cannot be lost.

The needle of my heart
points to you.

I hope today finds the needle of your heart pointing directly toward whatever— or whomever — orients you in this life.

~ A

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Summer reminds me of my grandfather. He liked fireworks and horseshoes, canoe rides and bird watching, salted watermelon and sweet corn, roasted on the cob.

I thought of him last night, as we watched fireworks launch from dozens of backyards, up and down our dry valley, the echoes of their detonations reverberating — disorienting and strange — off the sage-scented, grass-covered hills. My grandfather liked fireworks, but preferred safety, in all its minutiae. I still hear his voice, echoing down the valley of time, orienting and familiar, whenever I so much as strike a match. (“Away from you, Adam. Away.”) He worried about the safety of those he loved, and would not have approved of last night’s dry weather displays.

I thought of him again briefly this morning, as we woke to wildfire alarms, disorienting and increasingly familiar, and to a valley full of sage-scented smoke. I think he’d be proud of our go-kits and evac plan, of the real-time incident maps just a click away in our browser. I think he’d be frightened by the prospect of a future in which such things are ever more necessary.

Poems not only reveal or examine layers, they collect them, too, as they travel with us through time. I’d already planned on sharing this specific poem today. And now the synchronicity of the day’s events have added a new layer of memory for me, to a piece that was already about my grandfather, summer, safety, and the scent of smoke:

Smoke

The scent of a cigarette
reminds me of my grandfather,
who would be horrified to know this —
he was so proud to have never smoked.

But he did take me to Fenway,
bought soda and Cracker Jacks,
and a scorecard so I could keep stats.

I liked the game,
the chorus of the crowd,
the hot salted popcorn we would share.

And I loved the green bowl of that stadium,
filled with golden halogen light
and a thick blue blanket
of cigarette smoke.

Thanks for reading,
~ A

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After moving to a plant-based diet a number of years ago, I was thrilled to discover one particularly happy side-effect: the near elimination of my lifelong migraines.

But near elimination is not total elimination, and this week a migraine stopped by for a visit.

Migraines suck. (Poetic, I know.) So do many other things in life, some more, some less. If my experience with migraines has a silver lining, it's that it puts me in kinship with these ‘many other things.’ When I do have one, it renews my patience with others. I remember to assume everyone has something painful (and, perhaps, invisible) they’re carrying, too.

And the migraines put on one hell of a light show, so there’s that.

This week’s migraine reminded me of this poem, which explores what it means to be isolated with something painful, out beyond the boundaries of language:

Migraine With Aura

Yes, the pain —
the hot nail 
hammer to the skull,
the fall forever vertigo.

But also —

my bespoke kaleidoscope
my silent fireworks
my private, scintillating
field of diamonds.

I cannot describe it.
I cannot show it to you.
I cannot share with you
this searing, otherworldly light

that shines from nowhere
on nothing
for no one
but me.

Thanks for reading,
~ A

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