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October 8 2021 Work Party
One person gave voice to a desire. Another person said YES. Several more people came along. Because of one strong, powerful, beautiful young woman, we gathered under a fall sky and found connection to the earth and to each other. It just takes one.
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September 25 2021 Work Party
Heavy That timeI thought I could notgo any closer to griefwithout dying I went closer,and I did not die.Surely Godhad his hand in this, as well as friends.Still, I was bent,and my laughter,as the poet said, was nowhere to be found.Then said my friend Daniel,(brave even among lions),“It’s not the weight you carry but how you carry it –books, bricks, grief –it’s all in the wayyou embrace it, balance it, carry it when you cannot, and would not,put it down.”So I went practicing.Have you noticed? Have you heardthe laughterthat comes, now and again,out of my startled mouth? How I lingerto admire, admire, admirethe things of this worldthat are kind, and…
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September 11 2021 Work Party
Blue Oak A meadow ends where all the perpendiculars of a leafy brown river throw themselves up towards blue. The fruits are olive and ocher. Sprays of dark leaves shiver and splash with sun. Lightning scars show where the main, once shaped by flames, was not lost but reduced to fine fists, oak tissue under sheets of earth, sleeping through the storm and teeth of quick-heat. Here it is: the world utterly lovely despite the anguish, despite endless battles. Meanwhile, you have slipped away to yours. My phone is still again. I could call back. I could babble about this testimony to resilience, bent limbs and great elbows of trunk…
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August 14 2021 Work Party
The world is on fire: right now the Western U.S, Canada, Italy, Turkey, Greece. Where else? It’s possible that Finland is still burning, that the fires of Siberia continue to smother the North Pole with wildfire smoke not seen there, in recorded history, until now. While wildfires burn, ice and frozen ground melts. We cannot be sure, as temperatures continue to climb, that the Arctic tundra will remain permanently frozen year round. And now the air currents over the Atlantic Ocean, including the Gulf Stream, may be shutting down. As these events unfold, it is increasingly difficult to see them as isolated or to deny that we are experiencing their…
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July 25 2021 Work Party
The scratches on my arms remind me that I touch the world and the world touches me. Here, with you, is where I am meant to be. Thank you.
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July 17 2021 Interlude
I wanted clear the entire area of Himalayan blackberry regrowth. I wanted to hold my Asian neighbors close, to keep them safe from vitriol and hate. I wanted to dismantle the system that murders black people at the hands of the state. I wanted to shore things up. I wanted to repair the cracks. I wanted to make everything beautiful. I wanted to protect the salmon, tell them it was safe to come back, that there would be no stormwater runoff or hardened banks or dammed rivers to kill them upon their return. I wanted to reconnect the rivers to their floodplains, wildlife corridors to each other. I wanted to…
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we needed to be outside
Outside the warmth of the sun reaches my core, birdsong delights my ears, clouds—my heart sentries—drift in the sky. My child’s mouth hurts from the joy of the season’s first salmonberries. We needed to be outside to be feel what it is to be home.
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May 8 2021 Work Party
Sometimes the digging and pulling and cuttingis not the medicinebut the space for feeling the painof living in a world barrelingtoward the brink of what could bemass extinctionor maybe something elsemaybe somethinggenerative and alivethat requires a complete surrenderto grievingin order to be born.Either waythe earth knowshow to hold our tears.
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April 10 2021 Work Party
Nothing Wants to Sufferby Danusha Laméris after Linda Hogan Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not wantto suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it. The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust. The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey. These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes, made quickly, and without much suffering. The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth. A table, the…
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March 27 2021 Work Party
Little hands do important work. They find the smallest friends nestled in the soil and insist on safe haven for them. They stay present and persist and with determination dig roots longer than they are tall from dark, rich earth. They are filled with wisdom. I help, but work mostly to stay present to their journey. It’s an important one. And important for me to practice simply being alongside another–witnessing. Birds call to each other around us, clouds pass through a pale blue sky, robins engage in territorial dispute, a downy woodpecker stands sentinel. For some blissful moments that stretch to hours, it feels like we might just be all…
